I did the same thing until Rails 3 came out -- skipping controller and view tests completely. Now I do Rack-level tests, at least for the non-HTML endpoints. If

I did the same thing until Rails 3 came out -- skipping controller and view tests completely. Now I do Rack-level tests, at least for the non-HTML endpoints. If they are using standard REST conventions, they are even easier to test. I send Rack HTTP request, I get back Rack HTTP response. I test the JSON/XML coming out. Considering that "web apps" in the future will really mean "mobile apps", I think in the future Rails will mostly drive endpoints and barely serve dynamically-generated HTML, most of the views being constructed out of Javascript/HTML on the browser end. Testing to see that data gets applied to the right DOM element will be easier on the browser side (or even with a fake Node.js browser) if the mocking is done there. I suspect that isolating the views properly from the rest of the app will make the whole stack easier to test and maintain. (It is also easier to find a decent Javascript developer than it is to find a decent Rails developer).