Problems with controller.action_name in view tests

_form.html.erb

<%= form_for @car, :html => { :class => 'form-horizontal' } do |f| %>
  <fieldset>
    <legend><%=controller.action_name.capitalize %> Car</legend>

    <div class="control-group">
      <%= f.label :name, :class => 'control-label' %>
      <div class="controls">
        <%= f.text_field :name, :class => 'text_field' %>
      </div>
    </div>

    <div class="form-actions">
      <%= f.submit nil, :class => 'btn btn-primary' %>
      <%= link_to 'Cancel', cars_path, :class => 'btn' %>
    </div>
  </fieldset>
<% end %>

gistfile1.txt

Running: spec/views/cars/new.html.erb_spec.rb
Running tests with args ["--color", "--failure-exit-code", "2", "--format", "progress", "--format", "Guard::RSpec::Formatter::NotificationRSpec", "--out", "/dev/null", "--require", "/opt/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/guard-rspec-0.6.0/lib/guard/rspec/formatters/notification_rspec.rb", "spec/views/cars/new.html.erb_spec.rb"]...
F

Failures:

  1) cars/new renders new car form
     Failure/Error: render
     ActionView::Template::Error:
       undefined method `capitalize' for nil:NilClass
     # ./app/views/cars/_form.html.erb:3:in `_app_views_cars__form_html_erb___1022961548_2520415460'
     # ./app/views/cars/_form.html.erb:1:in `_app_views_cars__form_html_erb___1022961548_2520415460'
     # ./app/views/cars/new.html.erb:1:in `_app_views_cars_new_html_erb___977315666_2520559140'
     # ./spec/views/cars/new.html.erb_spec.rb:11

Finished in 0.12481 seconds
1 example, 1 failure

Failed examples:

rspec ./spec/views/cars/new.html.erb_spec.rb:10 # cars/new renders new car form
Done.

new.html.erb

<%= render :partial => 'form' %>

new.html.erb_rspec.rb

require 'spec_helper'

describe "cars/new" do
  before(:each) do
    assign(:car, stub_model(Car,
      :name => "MyString"
    ).as_new_record) 

    controller.action_name = 'new'
  end

  it "renders new car form" do
    render

    # Run the generator again with the --webrat flag if you want to use webrat matchers
    assert_select "form", :action => cars_path, :method => "post" do
      assert_select "input#car_name", :name => "car[name]"
    end
  end
end

Can you use a Factory instead of stub_model?

I could yes, that is maybe next step. - but the solution was to add a stub for the controller.action_name

controller.action_name = 'new'

Thanks for posting this. I just started working with RSpec, and the scaffold generated code had this issue.