Nothing new here, but thought I would share something that set me back a bit when first learning RSpec and testing controllers. If you're using a user authentication system like acts_as_authenticated, you have a method available in your controllers called "current_user" which of course returns the currently logged in user. To simulate this in a controller spec using RSpec, you can tell the controller to return a mock User object when current_user is called:

before do
  controller.stub!(:current_user).and_return(mock_model(User, :to_param => "1"))
end

Of course you may have to change the :to_param value to something else, depending on what you're testing (e.g., maybe different users have different roles/permissions).

Thanks to Igal Koshevoy for the last tip I needed to get this working. Igal wrote the awesome AutomateIt open source tool for automating the setup and maintenance of servers, applications and their dependencies.