Database setup and seeds for Rails, RSpec, Capybara, DatabaseCleaner and friends

gistfile1.rb

# Database setup and seeds loading
# See the block post : http://sigkill.tumblr.com/post/58933579738/test-database-setup-and-seeds-with-rails-rspec

module Seeder
  @@__cache__ = {}

  def self.load_seed(filename, prefix='app')
    filename = Rails.root + "db/seeds/#{prefix}/#{filename}.seeds.rb"
    seed_mod = @@__cache__[filename] ||= begin
      mod = Module.new
      buf = "def self.seed!"
      buf << File.read(filename)
      buf << "end"
      mod.module_eval(buf)
      mod
    end
    seed_mod.seed!
  end

end

# Don't get confused by this module it is just there because
# DatabaseCleaner is not able to tell what the current strategy
# is (DatabaseCleaner.strategy won't work [sigh..])
module Strategy
  def self.set(value)
    DatabaseCleaner.strategy = @strategy = value
    @strategy
  end

  def self.get
    @strategy
  end

  def self.truncation?
    @strategy == :truncation
  end

  def self.transaction?
    @strategy == :transaction
  end
end

# load all the seeds you need
def load_seeds
  Seeder.load_seed('configuration', 'test')
  Seeder.load_seed('categories')
end

RSpec.configure do |config|

  config.use_transactional_fixtures = false

  config.before(:suite) do
    Strategy.set :transaction
    DatabaseCleaner.clean_with :truncation
    load_seeds
  end

  config.before(:each) do
    # differenciate between features and other kinds of examples
    if example.metadata[:type] == :feature
      # if previous example was already a transation we
      # don't need to reload the seeds
      load_seeds unless Strategy.transaction?
      Strategy.set :truncation
    else
      # strategy was previously transaction, the seeds are already there
      load_seeds if Strategy.truncation?
      Strategy.set :transaction
    end
    DatabaseCleaner.start
  end

  config.after(:each) do
    DatabaseCleaner.clean
  end

end