rspec users - Nov 2010 - Newbie questions - Best practice for loading local db data and model tests? (factory_girl , debugging ?)

I''m pretty much a newbie with Rails and RSpec. I''m trying to
follow best
practices as I start to work on my own Rails side project.

I''m using: rspec 2.1.0 / Rails 3.0.1 / ruby 1.9.2

1) Currently I have a Rake task that I run that populates the local sqlite
db by using Rails models directly. Is this an ok approach to load simple
local data so your app is in a state for using it while developing? eg
    10.times do |x|
        u = User.new(...)
        u.save!

2) Is there a way I can just have my rspec tests run off the local sqlite db
populated from my rake task? or is this a bad practice? I currently have
messed around some using factory_girl factories and I can generate
everything using the factories and use them in my rspec model tests, but
this seems like I''m doing double the  work - I''m loading
things in my rake
file and then again similar things are loaded with my factories? - maybe the
solution is to leverage the factory_girl factories to also populate my local
db with a rake task?
What is the preferred approach for setting this kind of stuff up so your
application has local data for working with and also for testing your
models?

3) Is there any way to use log/put statements to help in debugging within an
rspec test so that I can run a single test and see what''s going on
directly
in the console?

(I''m finding it difficult to find a lot of this documentation in one
place.
If all of the above kind of questions are easily covered in David''s
pragmatic rspec book, then I''ll just go get the electronic version.)

Thanks,

-- 
Rick R
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1. Rails provides db/seeds.rb and the "db:seed" rake task specifically
   for this. See: http://railscasts.com/episodes/179-seed-data
   2. Yep, this is bad and will lead to slow, brittle specs. The RSpec Book
   talks about the importance of isolation and all that Good Stuff.
   3. The Rails logger is available to you:
   http://guides.rubyonrails.org/debugging_rails_applications.html#the-logger?
Keep in mind, you could just set an expectation on whatever you wanted
to
   "log", and see what happens to it in the spec output.


On Tue, Nov 23, 2010 at 3:19 PM, Rick R <rickcr at gmail.com> wrote:
> I''m pretty much a newbie with Rails and RSpec. I''m trying
to follow best
> practices as I start to work on my own Rails side project.
>
> I''m using: rspec 2.1.0 / Rails 3.0.1 / ruby 1.9.2
>
> 1) Currently I have a Rake task that I run that populates the local sqlite
> db by using Rails models directly. Is this an ok approach to load simple
> local data so your app is in a state for using it while developing? eg
>     10.times do |x|
>         u = User.new(...)
>         u.save!
>
> 2) Is there a way I can just have my rspec tests run off the local sqlite
> db populated from my rake task? or is this a bad practice? I currently have
> messed around some using factory_girl factories and I can generate
> everything using the factories and use them in my rspec model tests, but
> this seems like I''m doing double the  work - I''m loading
things in my rake
> file and then again similar things are loaded with my factories? - maybe
the
> solution is to leverage the factory_girl factories to also populate my
local
> db with a rake task?
> What is the preferred approach for setting this kind of stuff up so your
> application has local data for working with and also for testing your
> models?
>
> 3) Is there any way to use log/put statements to help in debugging within
> an rspec test so that I can run a single test and see what''s going
on
> directly in the console?
>
> (I''m finding it difficult to find a lot of this documentation in
one place.
> If all of the above kind of questions are easily covered in
David''s
> pragmatic rspec book, then I''ll just go get the electronic
version.)
>
> Thanks,
>
> --
> Rick R
>
> _______________________________________________
> rspec-users mailing list
> rspec-users at rubyforge.org
> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/rspec-users
>
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