rspec users - Apr 2010 - running: 'rake spec' mixes ApplicationHelper into my ActiveRecord model instances

When I run the a controllers spec test on it''s own I get just what I
expect.

But when I run the same tests with: rake spec I get some strange errors because
ApplicationHelper ends up getting mixed into my
ActiveRecord model instances.

Is this normal? It seems nutty to me -- maybe it''s a problem just in my
codebase.

This is a rails 2.3.4 project using these versions of rspec and rspec-rails:

$ gem list rspec

*** LOCAL GEMS ***

rspec (1.3.0)
rspec-rails (1.3.2)

This gist shows some details of the issue: http://gist.github.com/375634

The code is in the emb-test branch of http://github.com/stepheneb/rigse

solved ...

Running the ApplicationHelper spec tests mixed the ApplicationHelper methods
into Object.

Actually I don''t remember making the helper being tested or the spec
;-) Might have been generated by restful authentication ...

Here''s what''s in spec/helpers/application_helper_spec.rb
(which is what is causing the problem):

   require File.dirname(__FILE__) + ''/../spec_helper''
   include ApplicationHelper
   include AuthenticatedTestHelper

   describe ApplicationHelper do

     describe "title" do
       it "should set @page_title" do
         title(''hello'').should be_nil
         @page_title.should eql(''hello'')
       end
    
       it "should output container if set" do
         title(''hello'', :h2).should
have_tag(''h2'', ''hello'')
       end
     end

   end

Evidently self is Object when that file is loaded and mixes the methods in
ApplicationHelper into Object -- not useful -- but
I''ll bet I''m still doing something wrong ...

Here''s what I replaced it with which works fine:

   require ''spec_helper''

   class ViewWithApplicationHelper < ActionView::Base
      include ApplicationHelper
      # When actually running in a view the controller''s instance
variables are
      # mixed into the object that is self when rendering, but instances
      # created from a class that just inherits from ActionView::Base
don''t have
      # those instance variables (like @page_title) mixed in. So I add it by
hand.
      attr_accessor :page_title  
   end

   describe ViewWithApplicationHelper do

     before(:each) do
       @view = ViewWithApplicationHelper.new
     end

     describe "title" do
       it "should set @page_title" do
         @view.title(''hello'').should be_nil
         @view.page_title.should eql(''hello'')
       end
    
       it "should output container if set" do
         @view.title(''hello'', :h2).should
have_tag(''h2'', ''hello'')
       end
     end

   end


http://gist.github.com/375634 updated with the description of using ruby-debug
to find this problem.