Issue with using super after a query in Rails 4.2.11 Test Environment

Question

I am currently using ruby 2.2.0 and rails 4.2.11 and writing controller tests for an application.

Specifically I am running into an issue when testing the following index action for users:

test 'should pull index with search params' do @current_user = users(:one) cookies[:auth_token] = @current_user.auth_token ##signing in user so they can run index action get 'index', search: { "term" => 'name' ##Search term index action will look for in first and last name fields } assert_response :success end

This should just query the users for any that have the string "name" in their first or last names. When I test the index action without a search parameter, it runs fine, when I do pass the parameter, I get the following error.

UsersControllertest#test_should_pull_index_with_search_params:
Actionview::Template::Error: undefined method `total_pages' for #<ActiveRecord::Relation []>
   config/initializers/will_paginate.rb:5:in `will_paginate'
   app/helpers/application_helper.rb:84:in `will_paginate'
   app/views/users/index.html.haml:30:in `_app_views_users_index_html_haml'
   test/controllers/users_controller_test.rb:15:in `block in <class:UsersControllerTest>'

Here is the index action in my users controller

 def index
    @users = if params[:search].blank?
      User.page(params[:page]).order("super_admin DESC").order(:first_name)
    else
      User.where('first_name LIKE ? or last_name LIKE ?', "%#{params[:search]}%", "%#{params[:search]}%").order("super_admin DESC").order(:first_name)
    end      
  end

And here is the will_paginate method:

 def will_paginate(collection = nil, options = {})
      options[:renderer] ||= BootstrapLinkRenderer
      super.try :html_safe
    end

I have found that if I take out super.try :html_safe then the test runs fine. I am assuming that it is an issue with calling super in the test environment for ActiveRecord::Relation, because the action works without the query in the test environment, and this error doesn't pop up in any other environment.

Does anyone know of a work around to this, or is this an inherent limitation to Testing in Rails 4.2.11 and Ruby 2.2.0?