Auto-load the seed data from db/seeds.rb with rake

Question

I'm using rails-rspec gem and I have several specs (models, controllers, etc). When I run:

bundle exec rake

everything is tested. However, I would like to improve my specs by seeding some data (from db/seeds.rb) just after the database is created (in test environment).

My spec/spec_helper.rb file looks like this:

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

require File.expand_path("../../config/environment", __FILE__)
require 'rspec/rails'
require 'capybara/rspec'
require 'ruby-debug'

# 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}

RSpec.configure do |config|
  config.mock_with :rspec

  # 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

  config.include SpecHelper

  config.before(:suite) do
    DatabaseCleaner.strategy = :truncation
    DatabaseCleaner.clean_with(:truncation)
  end

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

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

  config.include Devise::TestHelpers, :type => :controller
  config.include Delorean
  config.after(:each) { back_to_the_present }
  config.include Factory::Syntax::Methods
  config.extend ControllerMacros, :type => :controller
end

What could do the best way to do so? Thanks.

Answer 1

Depending on how your seed file is configured, you might just be able to load/run it from a before(:each) or before(:all) block:

load Rails.root + "db/seeds.rb"