[\\"\\"] being inserted in URLs - using Sinatra

I’m following a very short tutorial for creating a simple URL shortener (http://blogs.sitepoint.com/2010/09/28/a-ten-minute-url-shortener/), but it’s already kind of dated. Anyway, I followed the code and kept getting this problem, then tried just copying the entire code off the site and pasting it in and still got the same problem.

Here’s the RSpec errors:


$ rspec my-url-shortener-test.rb
...FF

Failures:

  1) My URL Shortener redirects to home
     Failure/Error: last_response.headers["location"].should == "http://blogs.sitepoint.com/"
     expected: "http://blogs.sitepoint.com/",
          got: "http://blogs.sitepoint.com/[\\"\\"]" (using ==)
     # ./my-url-shortener-test.rb:28:in `block (2 levels) in <top (required)>'

  2) My URL Shortener unrecognised path redirects
     Failure/Error: last_response.headers["location"].should == "http://blogs.sitepoint.com/foo/bar"
     expected: "http://blogs.sitepoint.com/foo/bar",
          got: "http://blogs.sitepoint.com/[\\"foo/bar\\"]" (using ==)
     # ./my-url-shortener-test.rb:33:in `block (2 levels) in &lt;top (required)&gt;'

Finished in 0.01581 seconds
5 examples, 2 failures

Here are the two files I’m working with:

my-url-shortener-test.rb



require_relative "my-url-shortener"
require "rspec"
require "rack/test"
set :environment, :test
describe "My URL Shortener" do
  include Rack::Test::Methods
  def app
    Sinatra::Application
  end
  it "redirects to a blog post" do
    get "/123" # 123 (base 36) == 1371 (base 10)
    last_response.status.should == 301
    last_response.headers["location"].should == "http://blogs.sitepoint.com/?p=1371"
  end
  it "redirect to blog post with lowercase digits" do
    get "/a" # a (base 36) == 10 (base 10)
    last_response.status.should == 301
    last_response.headers["location"].should == "http://blogs.sitepoint.com/?p=10"
  end
  it "redirect to blog post with uppercase digits" do
    get "/A" # A (base 36) == 10 (base 10)
    last_response.status.should == 301
    last_response.headers["location"].should == "http://blogs.sitepoint.com/?p=10"
  end
  it "redirects to home" do
    get "/"
    last_response.status.should == 301
    last_response.headers["location"].should == "http://blogs.sitepoint.com/"
  end
  it "unrecognised path redirects" do
    get "/foo/bar"
    last_response.status.should == 301
    last_response.headers["location"].should == "http://blogs.sitepoint.com/foo/bar"
  end
end

my-url-shortener.rb



require "sinatra"

get %r{^/([0-9a-zA-Z]+)$} do
  postid = params[:captures][0].to_i(36)
  redirect "http://blogs.sitepoint.com/?p=#{postid}", 301
end

get "/*" do
  path = params["splat"]
  redirect "http://blogs.sitepoint.com/#{path}", 301
end

So, for some reason, the URLs are getting [\“\”] added to them, and I don’t know why :(. Any help is appreciated :smiley:

OP reports that the problem is resolved.