Seeding test database in rails 4

Question

I'm just starting to implement some tests for my work in progress rails app. I have some dependencies (the main one being devise for user management) which will require me to have a user already registered.

I have these items set up in my db/seeds.rb file.

I have found some information from this article, this question and this question but they relate to earlier versions of rails.

I created a test_seeds.rake file as suggested by one of the questions, but it didn't seem to get called when I run

rake tests

so I'm working on the theory that it wasn't just the test folder structure that changed as part of rails 4.

Can anyone provide any rails 4 guidance on how to achieve this?

Thanks Jane

score 3 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:18

3

Aha, thanks to Steve's comment to this question I discovered

Rails.application.load_seed

which I've implemented in the following method in my test/test_helper.rb file as follows:

  def set_up
    Rails.application.load_seed 
  end

which does what I need. I'm unsure if this is a Rails 4 way of doing it though.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:18

Community

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answered Oct 09 '13 at 16:00

Jane

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I'm using RSpec and put this in spec/rails_helper.rb after all of the requires statements. – Douglas Lovell Jan 17 '15 at 16:03

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 09 '13 at 14:28

I would use seedbank.

It allows you to specify separate seed files.

Seed files that need to be run in every environment.
Seed files that only need to be run in development, test or production.
Seed files that need to be run in certain custom situations.

I think that seedbank overrides the rake db:setup task, and that this in turn is run by rake tests. But you would have to test that to make sure.

Seeding test database in rails 4

2 Answers2