Sometimes you need to look at the filter chain in specs. You can do it like that on Rails 2:

controller.class.filter_chain.map(&:method)

Opscomplete powered by

Save money by migrating from AWS to our fully managed hosting in Germany.

• Trusted by over 100 customers
• Ready to use with Ruby, Node.js, PHP
• Proactive management by operations experts

Read more Show archive.org snapshot

Note that we need to look at the controller's class since before_filter and after_filter stuff happens on the class level.

Also mind that the above code will give you all filters, both those run before and after an action. You can query before? and after? on the filter objects to scope down to only some of them:

controller.class.filter_chain.select(&:before?).map(&:method)

For Rails 3, do it like this (warning, ugly!):

controller._process_action_callbacks.select { |c| c.kind == :before }.map(&:filter)

That all being said, it may make more sense for you to use a Cucumber feature in the first place.