Good notes posted by Towbie

Testing protected controllers

When testing controllers which are protected with #authenticate_or_request_with_http_basic this is how you can supply the credentials for a successful login:

@request.env["HTTP_AUTHORIZATION"] = "Basic " + Base64::encode64("username:password")

Must be set before the request is sent through #get or whatever method.

Customizing prompt

The :prompt option not only accepts a boolean value. It can also be given a string to define another than the standard prompt ‘Please select’. Referring to the example it could read:

collection_select(:post, :author_id, Author.find(:all),
                  :id, :name_with_initial,
                 {:prompt => 'Please select the author of this post'})

Disable default date

If you want a date selector that initially doesn’t have a date selected you can pass it the option :include_blank.

date_select("project", "due_date", :include_blank => true)