[ericb]

They are, but the naming convention is a rails-specific quirk.

Usually functional testing is defined as checking functionality vs. requirements, and it is done with something like selenium, or Quick Test Pro when it is automated. And usually, since requirements don't deal with controller functionality but are most often written about the system as a whole, functional testing would be what Rails calls "integration" tests, or Rails/RSpec calls "request" tests.

When the controller tests were named "functional tests" I think integration tests in Rails were not implemented yet, and controller tests were the highest up the stack you could test, so the name made more sense then.