CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ruby-on-railsminitest
user59382
user59382

Reputation: 1

how to test rails 4 with persisted data?

I've spent hours on findin information on how to test rails 4 app with new MiniTest, seems like everyone use rspec. I'm trying to test all levels of application, and currently stuck on how to test persisted data, for example I've User model which is belongs to Account and I want to test registration and authentication and all post-auth things. Currently all my test aren't persistent, model level test create users with each test-run.

However I want some data to be persistent, for example few User-Accounts, or linked projects with account. I don't want to recreate them with each run. But I wasn't able to find any information regarding rails 4 and MiniTest.

So what should I use to persist data? fixtures or seed.rb? How to reset data during controller \integration tests?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1388

Answers (4)

Ilija Eftimov
Ilija Eftimov

Reputation: 820

Every time you run your tests they are run on a clean database. Like other people said, you should be testing your application's logic! You can use FactoryGirl to add persistence to your tests. You can define your own factories and create objects out of them in your tests.

For example, defining a factory is easy:

FactoryGirl.define do
  factory :user do
    first_name "John"
    last_name  "Doe"
    admin false
  end
end

After that, in your test, you can call this factory:

# Returns a User instance that's not saved in database
user = FactoryGirl.build(:user)

# Returns a saved (in database) User instance
user = FactoryGirl.create(:user)

Also, you can provide your own values for User's attributes:

jane_doe = FactoryGirl.create(:user, first_name: "Jane", last_name: "Doe")

In your situation, if you want to create a factory for the Account class and add an association (the User) to the factory:

FactoryGirl.define do
  factory :user do
    first_name "John"
    last_name  "Doe"
    admin false
  end
  factory :account do
    acc_number 123456789
    full_name "John Doe"
    association :user, factory: :user 
  end
end

You can read more about FactoryGirl here

Also, about cleaning out your database, you can check out the Database Cleaner gem. It's easy to configure and it works!

Hope that helps!

Upvotes: 1

blowmage
blowmage

Reputation: 8984

You should use fixtures to provide a default set of data for your tests. ActiveSupport::TestCase will wrap each test in a DB transaction, rolling back all changes between tests. This means that you don't have to do any work to reset the DB in your controller or integration tests, it does it for you automatically.

Upvotes: 3

mharper
mharper

Reputation: 3272

If I understand you correctly (and I'm not entirely sure that I do), you might find that factory_girl does what you want in terms of providing "persistent data" you can use for testing.

Upvotes: 0

Benjamin Tan Wei Hao
Benjamin Tan Wei Hao

Reputation: 9691

The test database is cleared after each test run, to ensure that you have a clean slate. In general, you should be testing logic. Testing whether data is persisted is really Rails' job, and that is already covered by its own test suite.

If you really want to check for persistence, you could so something like:

  lambda { user.save }.must_change "User.count", +1

But really, what you should test is your own logic, not whether the database works or not.

Upvotes: 1

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