How can I expose controller helper methods in Rails view specs using RSpec?

You can solve this by making your custom helper methods available directly to your view specs—just like Devise does with its controller helpers. One way to do this is to extract your helper methods into their own module and then configure RSpec to include that module in view specs.

For example, if you have a helper method:

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# app/controllers/application_controller.rb (or similar)
helper_method :example_method

def example_method
  @example_method ||= nil
end

You can extract it into its own module:

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# app/helpers/example_helper.rb
module ExampleHelper
  def example_method
    @example_method ||= nil
  end
end

Then include this helper in your controller:

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# app/controllers/application_controller.rb
class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
  include ExampleHelper
  helper_method :example_method
end

Finally, configure RSpec so that the view context has access to this helper module. In your RSpec configuration (typically in spec/rails_helper.rb), add:

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RSpec.configure do |config|
  config.include ExampleHelper, type: :view
end

With this setup, your view specs will be able to call example_method without raising an error, similar to how Devise makes its helpers available. This approach avoids the need to mock the method manually and mirrors the pattern used in the testing documentation to include helpers into test contexts.