load_and_test_fixtures

written by Jan on November 15th, 2007 @ 12:33 PM

When writing tests for Ruby on Rails we use fixtures to fill up our database. Most of the time this is a great approach, but sometimes we lose a lot of time debugging a problem that happens when you have invalid fixtures. To avoid this in the future, I’ve written a small test-helper to replace the “fixtures” command in your tests:

in test_helper.rb:

class Test::Unit::TestCase
  def self.load_and_test_fixtures *args
    self.fixtures *args

    args.each do |klass|
      class_eval <<-FUNC
      def test_1st_#{klass.to_s}_fixtures
        #{klass.to_s.classify.constantize}.find(:all).each do |inst|
        assert inst.valid?, inst.inspect + " - Validation error: " + inst.errors.full_messages.to_s
      end
    end
    FUNC
  end
end

In your test this gets you:

class UserTest < Test::Unit::TestCase
  load_and_test_fixtures :users

  def test_valid
    assert true
  end
end

and then, with valid tests:

Loaded suite /Users/jan/Projects/Openminds/sock/test/unit/user_test
Started
..
Finished in 0.133788 seconds.

2 tests, 11 assertions, 0 failures, 0 errors

and with a bad fixture you get:

Loaded suite /Users/jan/Projects/Openminds/sock/test/unit/user_test
Started
F.
Finished in 0.148564 seconds.

  1) Failure:
test_1st_users_fixtures(UserTest)
method test_1st_users_fixtures in (eval) at line 3
method each in (eval) at line 2
method test_1st_users_fixtures in (eval) at line 2
#<NormalUser id: 940844698, name: "Normal User 1", status: "active", type: "NormalUser", parent_id: 344941680> - Validation error: Name has already been taken.
<false> is not true.

2 tests, 10 assertions, 1 failures, 0 errors

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1 comment


Comments

  • junkiesxl on 23 Nov 13:19

    I'm currently looking at http://replacefixtures.rubyforge.org/, it's a not as fast as the regular fixtures (although this isn't really a problem for me) but it does address the problem you just described.

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