Rspec is using my development DB

Question

I'm using Rspec for testing. However, it uses my development DB instead of my test DB. How can this occur?

I simply use rspec to run my tests: don:my_project_root $ rspec

It seems like the common mistakes from other questions are only relevant to Rails 3 or are pretty outdated (using commands you no longer use with rspec).

Below is my spec_helper.rb.

ENV["RAILS_ENV"] = 'test'
require File.expand_path("../../config/environment", __FILE__)
require 'rspec/rails'
require 'rspec/autorun'
require "capybara/rspec" 
require 'database_cleaner'

# Requires supporting ruby files with custom matchers and macros, etc,
# in spec/support/ and its subdirectories.
Dir[Rails.root.join("spec/support/**/*.rb")].each { |f| require f }

# Checks for pending migrations before tests are run.
# If you are not using ActiveRecord, you can remove this line.
# ActiveRecord::Migration.check_pending! if defined?(ActiveRecord::Migration)

RSpec.configure do |config|
  # ## Mock Framework
  #
  # If you prefer to use mocha, flexmock or RR, uncomment the appropriate line:
  #
  # config.mock_with :mocha
  # config.mock_with :flexmock
  # config.mock_with :rr

  # Remove this line if you're not using ActiveRecord or ActiveRecord fixtures
  # config.fixture_path = "#{::Rails.root}/spec/fixtures"

  # If you're not using ActiveRecord, or you'd prefer not to run each of your
  # examples within a transaction, remove the following line or assign false
  # instead of true.
  config.use_transactional_fixtures = false # commented-out during tim's tutorial

  # Rails cast tutorial
  config.before(:suite) do
    DatabaseCleaner.strategy = :truncation
  end

  config.before(:each) do
    DatabaseCleaner.start
  end

  config.after(:each) do
    DatabaseCleaner.clean
  end

  # If true, the base class of anonymous controllers will be inferred
  # automatically. This will be the default behavior in future versions of
  # rspec-rails.
  config.infer_base_class_for_anonymous_controllers = false

  # Run specs in random order to surface order dependencies. If you find an
  # order dependency and want to debug it, you can fix the order by providing
  # the seed, which is printed after each run.
  #     --seed 1234
  config.order = "random"

  config.include FactoryGirl::Syntax::Methods

  config.include Capybara::DSL
end

database.yml

development:
  adapter: sqlite3
  database: db/development.sqlite3
  pool: 5
  timeout: 5000

# Warning: The database defined as "test" will be erased and
# re-generated from your development database when you run "rake".
# Do not set this db to the same as development or production.
test:
  adapter: sqlite3
  database: db/test.sqlite3
  pool: 5
  timeout: 5000

production:
  adapter: sqlite3
  database: db/production.sqlite3
  pool: 5
  timeout: 5000

Answer 1

I don't know if any of you is still having the issue, but for me moving

ENV["RAILS_ENV"] ||= 'test'

from rails_helper.rb to the top of spec_helper.rb fixed it. spec_helper.rb does a few things before loading rails_helper.rb, and something probably touches the database during that time.