rspec users - Feb 2011 - Why use DatabaseCleaner with rSpec?

Hi list,

I''ve used DatabaseCleaner in the past, but only when using Cucumber
and Selenium (or Steak + Celerity) since turning on
transactional_fixtures would prevent the data being accessible from
app-server that is also triggered for the tests. This works fine, and
is a de-facto solution for this problem.

I don''t see why I would want to use DatabaseCleaner with rspec though,
since everything is in the same process, transactional_fixtures could
do fine, in theory. Or not?

Marcelo.

On 2/8/11 10:49 AM, Marcelo de Moraes Serpa wrote:
> Hi list,
>
> I''ve used DatabaseCleaner in the past, but only when using
Cucumber
> and Selenium (or Steak + Celerity) since turning on
> transactional_fixtures would prevent the data being accessible from
> app-server that is also triggered for the tests. This works fine, and
> is a de-facto solution for this problem.
>
> I don''t see why I would want to use DatabaseCleaner with rspec
though,
> since everything is in the same process, transactional_fixtures could
> do fine, in theory. Or not?
>
> Marcelo.

If you are using RSpec with Rails and have a *single* ActiveRecord 
connection for your app then you do not need to use DatabaseCleaner and 
the built in transactional_fixtures method will do just great.  Once you 
need to either
   a) use a non-AR DB (e.g. mongodb, couchdb)
   b) have an out of process testing scenario (e.g. selenium)
   c) clean multiple connections (with an ActiveRecord DB or otherwise) or
   d) are not testing a Rails app (where the transactional_fixtures come 
from)
then using DatabaseCleaner will make your life easier.

HTH,
Ben