Why use DatabaseCleaner with rSpec?

Testing RSpec
1

Hi list,

I’ve used DatabaseCleaner in the past, but only when using Cucumber
and Selenium (or Steak + Celerity) since turning on
transactional_fixtures would prevent the data being accessible from
app-server that is also triggered for the tests. This works fine, and
is a de-facto solution for this problem.

I don’t see why I would want to use DatabaseCleaner with rspec though,
since everything is in the same process, transactional_fixtures could
do fine, in theory. Or not?

Marcelo.

2

On 2/8/11 10:49 AM, Marcelo de Moraes S. wrote:

do fine, in theory. Or not?

Marcelo.

If you are using RSpec with Rails and have a single ActiveRecord
connection for your app then you do not need to use DatabaseCleaner and
the built in transactional_fixtures method will do just great. Once you
need to either
a) use a non-AR DB (e.g. mongodb, couchdb)
b) have an out of process testing scenario (e.g. selenium)
c) clean multiple connections (with an ActiveRecord DB or otherwise)
or
d) are not testing a Rails app (where the transactional_fixtures come
from)
then using DatabaseCleaner will make your life easier.

HTH,
Ben