My Rails controller test is not inheriting the ApplicationController methods

Question

I have an ApplicationController with a given method in the public area

def current_user 
  session[:user]
end

and another controller

ObjetosController < ApplicationController

which needs to access such method, and I'm getting a horrible error while running my tests (rake test:functionals):

NameError: undefined local variable or method `current_user' for

I'm using Ruby 2.0.0 and Rails 4.0. I've been travelling Google and StackOverflow for hours and hours and haven't found anything about it. Maybe someone can give me a hint or help me search for an answer please?

If it helps, if I put crap inside ApplicationController, and run the test, it doesn't complain!!! It's like it was loading another version of this class...

Here my ObjetosController code:

class ObjetosController < ApplicationController
  before_action :set_objeto, only: [:show, :edit, :update, :destroy]

  # GET /objetos
  # GET /objetos.json
  def index
    @objetos = Objeto.all
  end

  # GET /objetos/1
  # GET /objetos/1.json
  def show
  end

  # GET /objetos/new
  def new
    @objeto = Objeto.new
  end

  # GET /objetos/1/edit
  def edit
  end

  # POST /objetos
  # POST /objetos.json
  def create
    @objeto = Objeto.new(objeto_params)

    respond_to do |format|
      if @objeto.save
        format.html { redirect_to @objeto, notice: 'Objeto was successfully created.' }
        format.json { render action: 'show', status: :created, location: @objeto }
      else
        format.html { render action: 'new' }
        format.json { render json: @objeto.errors, status: :unprocessable_entity }
      end
    end
  end

  # PATCH/PUT /objetos/1
  # PATCH/PUT /objetos/1.json
  def update
    current_user
    respond_to do |format|
      if @objeto.update(objeto_params)
        format.html { redirect_to @objeto, notice: 'Objeto was successfully updated.' }
        format.json { head :no_content }
      else
        format.html { render action: 'edit' }
        format.json { render json: @objeto.errors, status: :unprocessable_entity }
      end
    end
  end

  # DELETE /objetos/1
  # DELETE /objetos/1.json
  def destroy
    @objeto.destroy
    respond_to do |format|
      format.html { redirect_to objetos_url }
      format.json { head :no_content }
    end
  end

  private
    # Use callbacks to share common setup or constraints between actions.
    def set_objeto
      @objeto = Objeto.find(params[:id])
    end

    # Never trust parameters from the scary internet, only allow the white list through.
    def objeto_params
      params.require(:objeto).permit(:nombre, :codigo_sgej)
    end
end

Answer 1

Solved it.

In my ApplicationController class I was instantiating some classes dynamically defined for each environment. I was also using some constants defined per environment.

As this app hasn't been released to staging or production yet, I had such values defined only in config/environments/development.rb file. I added them to config/environments/test.rb and now it works!

I lost hours with this problem, I'm really dissapointed with rails (or ruby?) for not showing any error at all...