Rails named route not recognized - ruby-on-rails

Question

I have started working on Chapter 8 of the famous Rails tutorial. I think I followed the instructions closely and defined the following routes:
SampleApp::Application.routes.draw do
resources :users
resources :sessions, only: [:new, :create, :destroy]
root 'static_pages#home'
match '/signup', to: 'users#new', via: 'get'
match '/signin', to: 'sessions#new', via: 'get'
match '/signout', to: 'sessions#destroy', via: 'delete'
match '/help', to: 'static_pages#help', via: 'get'
match '/about', to: 'static_pages#about', via: 'get'
match '/contact', to: 'static_pages#contact', via: 'get'
The session controller (/controllers/sessions_controller.rb) is defined as follows:
class SessionsController < ApplicationController
def new
end
def create
end
def destroy
end
end
In spec/requests/authentication_pages_spec.rb I have created the following test:
require 'spec_helper'
describe "Authentication" do
subject {page}
describe "signin page" do
before { visit signin_path}
it { should have_content('Sign in')}
it { should have_title('Sign in')}
end
end
The test causes the following errors:
Failures:
1) Authentication signin page
Failure/Error: before { visit signin_path}
NameError:
undefined local variable or method `signin_path' for #
<RSpec::Core::ExampleGroup::Nested_2::Nested_1:0x007f98dec05fe8>
# ./spec/requests/authentication_pages_spec.rb:7:in `block (3 levels) in <top (required)>'
2) Authentication signin page
Failure/Error: before { visit signin_path}
NameError:
undefined local variable or method `signin_path' for #
<RSpec::Core::ExampleGroup::Nested_2::Nested_1:0x007f98dec5cf50>
# ./spec/requests/authentication_pages_spec.rb:7:in `block (3 levels) in <top (required)>'
It seems the signin_path named route is not recognised even though it is defined in routes.rb. I replaced that named route with one of the others (signup_path) and the problem disappeared. So, it is something about this particular named route. Can you tell what the problem is?
rake routes produces the following output:
sb7904313:sample_app nnikolo$ rake routes
Prefix Verb URI Pattern Controller#Action
users GET /users(.:format) users#index
POST /users(.:format) users#create
new_user GET /users/new(.:format) users#new
edit_user GET /users/:id/edit(.:format) users#edit
user GET /users/:id(.:format) users#show
PATCH /users/:id(.:format) users#update
PUT /users/:id(.:format) users#update
DELETE /users/:id(.:format) users#destroy
sessions POST /sessions(.:format) sessions#create
new_session GET /sessions/new(.:format) sessions#new
session DELETE /sessions/:id(.:format) sessions#destroy
root GET / static_pages#home
signup GET /signup(.:format) users#new
signin GET /signin(.:format) sessions#new
signout DELETE /signout(.:format) sessions#destroy
help GET /help(.:format) static_pages#help
about GET /about(.:format) static_pages#about
contact GET /contact(.:format) static_pages#contact
I also re-started the server and it did not solve the problem (I made a post to the contrary but I was wrong).

Answer 1

Try this instead. You can access your route names by the command rake routes. Since it's coming from your sessions controller, by default the route is probably something like new_session_path. To change it, you need to specify what you what to change it to in your routes with as: new_name
match '/signin', to: 'sessions#new', via: 'get', as: 'signin'

Answer 2

Try:--
get "signin" => "sessions#new", :as => "signin"
resources :sessions
Use the route as new_session_path or signin_path

Answer 3

See this thread: undefined method `visit' when using RSpec and Capybara in rails
You possibly did not have the line config.include Capybara:DSL in your spec_helper.rb and something about putting the tests inside rspec/features/ due to the latest changes in Capybara.

Answer 4

I was wrong about the re-start solving the problem so retract this post.
==EDIT I found the culprit for this erratic behaviour of rspec: rails does not seem to empty the cache between tests (which is, in my opinion, a scary bug). By default it fails to re-read the files and thus may ignore changes that have occurred. I put more details here: Rails tutorial: Rails tutorial: undefined method