In specs, the session never persists but is always a new object for each request. Data put into the session in a previous request is lost. Here is how to circumvent that.
What's going on?
You are making ActionController::TestRequests in your specs, and their
#initialize method
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does this:
self.session = TestSession.new
This means that each time you say something like "get :index", the session in your controller will just be a new one, and you won't see anything you put into your session in a previous request.
Working around the issue
You can avoid that behavior by stubbing the controller's session and querying that stub:
persisted_session = ActionController::TestSession.new
controller.stub :session => persisted_session
# do things
persisted_session[:something].should ...
Apply this workaround only when you need it. Stubbing controller.session is not entirely the same, but good enough in most cases.
Example
If you, for example, had code that increments a "page_views" entry for every request you make, you could then test it like this:
get :index
persisted_session[:page_views].should == 1 # session[:page_views] is 1, so that would still work
get :index
persisted_session[:page_views].should == 2 # session[:page_views] would be 1, even though it works in the real world
