When using automated tests to test that my custom routes work, all I do is this:
test "that /logout route opens the logout page" do get '/logout' assert_response :success end or test "that /logout route opens the logout page" do get '/logout' assert_response :redirect end Is this a good enough test? To my mind it seems a bit vague. How could I write a test to explicitly verify the /logout route is actually going to the logout page/the user is served the logout view?
I would suggest that you look into rspec/rails and capybara for integration and or acceptance tests. These tests are more descriptive and sounds like what you may be asking about. For example, this spec is describing the authentication process
describe "signin" do before { visit signin_path } describe "with invalid information" do before { click_button "Sign in" } it { should have_selector('title', text: 'Sign in') } it { should have_selector('div.alert.alert-error', text: 'Invalid') } describe "after visiting another page" do before { click_link "Home" } it { should_not have_selector('div.alert.alert-error') } end end describe "with valid information" do let(:user) { FactoryGirl.create(:user) } before do fill_in "Email", with: user.email.upcase fill_in "Password", with: user.password click_button "Sign in" end it { should have_selector('title', text: user.name) } it { should have_link('Users', href: users_path) } it { should have_link('Profile', href: user_path(user)) } it { should have_link('Settings', href: edit_user_path(user)) } it { should have_link('Sign out', href: signout_path) } it { should_not have_link('Sign in', href: signin_path) } describe "followed by signout" do before { click_link "Sign out" } it { should have_link('Sign in') } end end This example was taken from the Ruby on Rails Tutorial book and is free online. It has hundreds of examples on integration testing.
Rails has testing facilities for routing. See http://guides.rubyonrails.org/testing.html#testing-routes for more. This will test that certain requests route to a certain controller and action. If you want to verify that specific pages or page content has been loaded after a request you can use integration / view tests to verify that page specific data is available (like a page title specific to the page in question).
