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@coreyhaines
Last active August 15, 2024 15:13
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Active Record Spec Helper - Loading just active record
--colour
-I app
require 'active_record'
connection_info = YAML.load_file("config/database.yml")["test"]
ActiveRecord::Base.establish_connection(connection_info)
RSpec.configure do |config|
config.around do |example|
ActiveRecord::Base.transaction do
example.run
raise ActiveRecord::Rollback
end
end
end
class Coderetreat < ActiveRecord::Base
def self.running_today
where(scheduled_on: Date.today)
end
end
require 'active_record_spec_helper'
require 'models/coderetreat'
describe Coderetreat do
describe ".running_today" do
it "returns a coderetreat scheduled for today" do
coderetreat = Coderetreat.create! city: "Chicago", scheduled_on: Date.today
Coderetreat.running_today.all.should =~ [coderetreat]
end
it "does not return a coderetreat not scheduled for today" do
coderetreat = Coderetreat.create! city: "Chicago", scheduled_on: Date.today.advance(:days => -1)
Coderetreat.running_today.should be_empty
end
end
end
#Some databases get upset if you try to start a new transaction while a transaction is already in play, so running the whole spec suite chokes when rspec is trying to start a transaction. You need to update your spec_helper to rely on active_record_spec_helper to do this for you.
#Replace this line
config.use_transactional_fixtures = true
#With this
require 'active_record_spec_helper'
#TADA
@coreyhaines
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Author

Thanks @revans. I'll try that.

@elight
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elight commented Dec 27, 2012

Very glad that you gist'd this. I had similar thoughts as @steveklabnik. I appreciate the insight!

@brandonhilkert
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@coreyhaines

Not using database_cleaner and using the below code cut off 0.2-0.3 sec.

  config.around do |example|
    ActiveRecord::Base.transaction do
      example.run
      raise ActiveRecord::Rollback
    end
  end

@coreyhaines
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@brandonhilkert Thanks. I'm going to try that.

@gvc
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gvc commented Dec 28, 2012

What happens with a class with a lot of relations? We may end up manually requiring a lot of things, won't we? Or is there a catch that I'm not seeing?

@felipeelias
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@brandonhilkert that's cool! But if you use capybara-webkit for example, this doesn't work :(

@felipeelias
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@brandonhilkert I mean, unless you workaround https://gist.github.com/4469873

@zamith
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zamith commented Jan 8, 2013

Two things I've noticed:

  • I had to require the model like this require_relative '../../app/models/coderetreat
  • When loading the full stack I had an ActiveModel::MassAssignmentSecurity::Error which passed with this approach

Not sure if I'm doing anything wrong. The idea is awesome though.

@jfelchner
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@zamith, I had the same problem. Were you sure to add the -I app line to your .rspec file? Then you require 'models/coderetreat'. That fixed it for me.

@gmodarelli
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If you are using Rails 4 with SQLite and database_cleaner 1.1.1 you get this error
undefined local variable or method `postgresql_version'

to solve the problem downgrade to database_cleaner 1.0.1

Thank you @coreyhaines for sharing this.

@george-carlin
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I had to add require "yaml" to the top of active_record_spec_helper to get this to work. RSpec 3.1.7, Rails 4.1.8.

@george-carlin
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I love this idea, and I really want to implement it more in my test suites. But I'm having the problem that my ActiveRecord models just have too damn many dependencies, and I have to add so many "requires" at the top of my spec file that I might as well just require spec_helper.

Of course, the obvious solution here is to reduce the number of dependencies. And in some cases this is pretty easy, but it's often not, because a lot of the dependencies are due to my associations.

E.g. say I have an model User that looks like this:

class Comment < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :design
end

If I set up my spec like this:

require 'active_record_spec_helper'

require "comment"

describe Comment do
  ... whatever
end

... then it will fail, because when it tries to load "comment.rb", it hits the line belongs_to :design, and starts looking for a Design class - which hasn't been required, so the whole thing crashes with uninitialized constant Comment::Design.

So I add require 'design' to the top of my spec - but within my Design class I have the line belongs_to :user, which crashes with uninitialized constant Design::User... so I add require 'user' to the top of my spec, which hits the line has_many :posts and raises uninitialized constant User::Post... and so on until I've required almost my entire app/models directory.

Is there something conceptual I'm missing? How do I get around this? Basic Rails associations don't seem like something I should be refactoring out into a separate class or module, and stubbing out the associations feels a bit icky too (plus I'm not entirely sure how to do it anyway.)

Anyone have any pointers?

@george-carlin
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Sorry, me again. StackOverflow bounty is available to anyone who can help me out with the above question:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/27427072/requiring-an-activerecord-model-without-having-to-require-the-entire-class-diagr

@christianrolle
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Did anyone came up with a solution to the question of georgemillo? I also struggle with the idea of loading all dependent models, which is undesireable to me.

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