Thu, 23 Feb 06 - Rails testing without database

Just yesterday I wanted to create a very quick rails app that didn’t rely on a database.

I removed :active_record from the frameworks loaded in evironment, but apparently this wasn’t quite enough. The setup and teardown methods in Test::Unit::TestCase were still attempting to load fixtures (which implies that active record is still present somewhere), which require the presence of a database. This was causing tests not to run. Having had a quick look at how active record intercepts the setup and teardown methods, it was relatively simple to stop it from doing so.

Just add the code below within the Test::Unit::TestCase declaration in test_helper.

def self.dont_use_fixtures
  class_eval do
    def self.method_added(method); end
    def setup; end
    def teardown; end
  end
end

This still requires that you add dont_use_fixtures into each test class definition.

class MyTest < Test::Unit::TestCase
  dont_use_fixtures
  def test_
    # my first test
  end
end

Having just written this it’s obvious now that it would make more sense to not require the declaration in each test class (as we supposedly don’t even have access to active record). We should probably also play fair and pass messages back to our parent if method_added isn’t being called with either setup or teardown.

The new code becomes (again, in Test::Unit::TestCase definition in test_helper).

def self.method_added(method)
  super unless [:setup, :teardown].include?(method.to_sym)
end
def setup; end
def teardown; end

This appears to work ok…