rspec users - Nov 2008 - Cucumber: Why rake features needs to call db:test:prepare?

I am missing something here. Using PostgreSQL, when I remove this line
from the rake task, I don''t see the DB being populated although I do
invoke create! on some models.

When I use debug(@some_instance) I see its id gets increased, so there
is definitely some data already in the DB.

Why can''t I see anything in the DB? Is it possible to mock models so
that the rake features doesn''t have to recreate the test DB each time
to
speed things up?

I am interested in replacing controller specs by webrat features. I
prefer the webrat''s black box approach more for testing controllers and
views.

Would it be possible to have autotest trigger "rake features"?
-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

On Wed, Nov 5, 2008 at 12:16 AM, Fernando Perez <lists at ruby-forum.com>
wrote:
> I am missing something here. Using PostgreSQL, when I remove this line
> from the rake task, I don''t see the DB being populated although I
do
> invoke create! on some models.
>
Vanilla Rails test:* tasks do the same, as do the rspec:* tasks.
db:test:prepare is a shortcut for running all the migrations from the
first to the last.

If you write a functional Test::Unit test and run rake
test:functionals - do you still have problems? If so - this is likely
not related to Cucumber.
> When I use debug(@some_instance) I see its id gets increased, so there
> is definitely some data already in the DB.
>
> Why can''t I see anything in the DB? Is it possible to mock models
so
> that the rake features doesn''t have to recreate the test DB each
time to
> speed things up?
>
> I am interested in replacing controller specs by webrat features. I
> prefer the webrat''s black box approach more for testing
controllers and
> views.
>
> Would it be possible to have autotest trigger "rake features"?
> --
> Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
> _______________________________________________
> rspec-users mailing list
> rspec-users at rubyforge.org
> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/rspec-users
>

Fernando Perez wrote:
> I am missing something here. Using PostgreSQL, when I remove this line
> from the rake task, I don''t see the DB being populated although I
do
> invoke create! on some models.
>
> When I use debug(@some_instance) I see its id gets increased, so there
> is definitely some data already in the DB.
>
> Why can''t I see anything in the DB? Is it possible to mock models
so
> that the rake features doesn''t have to recreate the test DB each
time to
> speed things up?
>   
I believe this can be explained by transactions.  Cucumber wraps it''s 
scenarios in ActiveRecord transactions (when in a rails app.)  Most DBs 
by default will not allow you to see data that has been inserted until 
the transaction is committed. You may disable the transactions if you 
wish by commenting out the following line in env.rb:
Cucumber::Rails.use_transactional_fixtures

If you want to place data in your DB before cucumber is ran you could 
consider Zach''s suggestion here:
http://www.continuousthinking.com/2008/7/17/using-seed-data-with-rspec-stories
> I am interested in replacing controller specs by webrat features. I
> prefer the webrat''s black box approach more for testing
controllers and
> views.
>
> Would it be possible to have autotest trigger "rake features"?
>   
The latest version of cucumber (master from github-- not released yet) 
currently does it.  But that default behavior might change in the future.
  (Reason being is that cucumber features are application level tests 
and may be too slow for the regular red->green->refactor cycle that 
autotest/autospec offers.)

-Ben

On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 3:25 PM, aslak hellesoy <aslak.hellesoy at
gmail.com>wrote:

> db:test:prepare is a shortcut for running all the migrations from the
> first to the last.
>
Not quite. db:test:prepare just copies the schema from the development
database to the test database. It aborts if there are any pending
migrations, but it doesn''t actually run any. That''s why any
data population
in a migration does not get done in the test db.

///ark
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