how do I get my logger messages to go to a file when testing a controller with rspec?

Question

I'm using Rspec2 with Watchr to test a post to a controller, like so:

...
 post :add_item, :add_item=> { "price" => price.to_s, "product_line" => line }
 # puts " response: "  + response.body
 response.should be_success
...    

I am getting a response and it looks fine, but for some reason this one isn't giving me a "success" response. I'm trying to figure out why. To that end, it would be very helpful if I could see my logs. I can see that the logs are getting initialized and are pointing to the right place, because when my env starts up I have this:

Loading environment: test
Logger: #<ActiveSupport::BufferedLogger:0xa201b24 @level=0, @buffer={},         
  @auto_flushing=1, @guard=#<Mutex:0xa201728>, 
  @log=#<File:/mnt/hgfs/the_app/log/test.log>, @namespace="">
Database: the_app_test

So that looks normal -- All my mongodb calls are getting logged, but RSpec seems to be redirecting the logger calls. Here's a sample that's not showing in the logs:

logger.debug "Params #{params.inspect}" (this line is right after the def in the controller)

I've checked my environments rb files and don't see anything that would explain this. Is there a way to get messages that are generated by controllers by rspec to go to their own log file? Is Rspec redirecting my logging output?

I read this blog post , but it's pretty outdated so I'm not sure it will help. Ever an issue with Rails.

Answer 1

The quick but ugly way: put logger = Rails::logger at the top of your controller method. Not sure if this will break normal logging yet.

and to put

config.before(:suite) do
Rails::logger  =
    ActiveSupport::BufferedLogger.new(File.join(Rails.root,
    "log", "rspec_env_#{Rails.env}.log"),
    ActiveSupport::BufferedLogger::Severity::DEBUG)

in my spec_helper.rb. Those two will result in the rspec logger calls going to "rspec_env_test.log" etc.

Anyone got a better way?