So small but so powerful, i just wanted to share my little time savers, and hope you share your most essential helpers in the comments.

(I use @item as an alias for the current object in all my tests, to make generic tests less painful.)

Small example:

it "renders feedback" do
  expects_find
  get :feedback , :id => @item.to_param
  response.should render_template('edit')
end

Code:

#spec/spec_helper.rb
def mock_create(item,success,para=nil)
  if para
    item.class.expects(:new).with(para).returns item
  else
    item.class.expects(:new).returns item
  end
  item.expects(:save).returns success
end

def mock_update(item,success)
  expects_find(item)
  item.expects(:save).returns success
end

def expects_find(item=nil)
  item ||= @item
  item.class.expects(:find).with(item.to_param).returns(item)
end