How do I easily parse a URL with parameters in a Rails test?

Question

I have a some code that embeds a return_to URL into a redirect (like OpenID) that I want to test:

def test_uses_referrer_for_return_to
  expecte         


        

Answer 1

CGI::parse(querystring) will parse a querystring into a hash. Then, CGI::unescape(string) will undo any URL-encoding in the value.

Alternatively, you can use Rack::Utils.parse_query and Rack::Utils.unescape if you're on a recent Rack-based version of Rails, and want to be super-modern.

I'm not aware of any Rails-specific helper methods that wrap these utility functions, but they're pretty simple to use, and CGI or Rack is already loaded in the Rails environment anyway.