Here's how I test my admin controllers that use HTTP basic authentication using RSpec 2: before(:each) do user = 'test' pw = 'test_pw' request.env['HTTP_AUTHORIZATION'] = ActionController::HttpAuthentication::Basic.encode_credentials(user,pw) end Actually, that's how I did it when I first tested things, but I've since put it in its own module under spec/support/auth_helper: module AuthHelper # do