Testing rendered content of a .gsp page in Grails 2.3.8 - grails

Question

First time asking here. I'll cut right to the chase. I'm trying to test the rendered view of a controller, and I haven't found any clear way to do it. In particular, what I'm trying to do is test the actual content of the .gsp rendered; namely, if the html page rendered contains a list of items (list, as in a <ul> and <li> tags, for example), or any other content the page should display. Is this possible? Or even a valid approach to test this kind of thing? I tried doing something like this:
The controller:
class ConnectedPairController {
def show(int id) {
//Some logic to populate collections and stuff
render(view:"show.gsp", model:['pqc':cp.getPath(),
'connected':cp.getPage(),
'instance':coll,
'pagesCollection':colPages])
}
The test:
#TestFor(ConnectedPairController)
class ConnectedPairControllerSpec extends Specification {
void "test show"() {
when:
controller.show(4) //4 being the id of the content I want to display
then:
controller.response.text.contains "Some string or html tag the page should display"
}
}
But the text returned is null. Maybe this is how it should be, but is there a way to get the rendered content?
What I found in the documentation is not useful (at least not for what I want to do), since IMHO it only tests trivial stuff, like what .gsp is being rendered, or the content of variables:
#TestFor(SimpleController)
class SimpleControllerSpec extends Specification {
void 'test home'() {
when:
controller.home()
then:
view == '/simple/homePage'
model.title == 'Hello World'
}
}
I hope I'm being clear enough. Thank you for your time.
PS: I'm using Grails 2.3.8. If you need any other information related to the environment and such, please let me know.

Answer 1

The response is not fully rendered in a unit test. response.text will always be null when rendering views.
The purpose of a unit test is to test one unit and mock out everything around it. The view layer is outside that unit.
If you want to test the view, try the GroovyPageUnitTestMixin
Mr. Haki has a good post on how to test views and templates that explains how to test them.

Answer 2

#ColinHarrington Thanks for your answer, and sorry for the delay. I have tried what it says on those websites, but no matter what view (.gsp) I render (like a simple page that just renders the content of a variable), the render method always returns null (not even an empty string).
The controller:
class TestingController {
def index() {
render view: "testing.gsp", model: [test:"Test String"]
}
}
The test:
import grails.test.mixin.TestMixin
import grails.test.mixin.web.GroovyPageUnitTestMixin
import spock.lang.Specification
#TestMixin(GroovyPageUnitTestMixin)
class TestingControllerSpec extends Specification {
def controller
def setup() {
controller = testFor(TestingController)
}
void "test something"() {
when:
controller.index()
then:
render (view:"/testing/testing.gsp", model:model) == "Test String"
}
}
Test result:
test something(webbluefinder.TestingControllerSpec)
|
Condition not satisfied:
render (view:"/testing/testing.gsp", model:model) == "Test String"
| | |
null | false
[test:Test String]
I also tried Mr. Haki's approach, and got the same result.
Do you happen to know why this is happening? Thanks for your time.