Question

Just wondering if there’s a way to run Rails tests without dropping the database. I’m currently only executing unit tests and am using the following rake command to do so: rake test:units.

Thanks for the help in advance!

Just in case this is relevant:

• Rails 3
• Ruby 1.8.7 (MRI)
• Oracle 11g Database
  • activerecord-oracle_enhanced-adapter

Answer 1

After doing some research, I have found that there isn’t a way to do this. The test rake tasks will always drop the database, even when providing the TEST= option as Bohdan suggests.

By using the --trace option, this can be proven. Here is the output:

$ rake test:units TEST=test/unit/post_test.rb --trace
(in /Users/johnnyicon/Development/ror/test-app)
** Invoke test:units (first_time)
** Invoke test:prepare (first_time)
** Invoke db:test:prepare (first_time)
** Invoke db:abort_if_pending_migrations (first_time)
** Invoke environment (first_time)
** Execute environment
** Execute db:abort_if_pending_migrations
** Execute db:test:prepare
** Invoke db:test:load (first_time)
** Invoke db:test:purge (first_time)
** Invoke environment 
** Execute db:test:purge
** Execute db:test:load
** Invoke db:schema:load (first_time)
** Invoke environment 
** Execute db:schema:load
** Execute test:prepare
** Execute test:units

Reading through the Ruby on Rails Guides for Testing, it describes what some of these rake tasks mean. The one to pay particular attention to is the db:test:load task, which you see on the 7th line from the bottom of the output as ** Execute db:test:load. The guides say the following about this task:

Recreate the test database from the
current schema.rb

So even if I were to execute the unit tests one by one as Bohdan suggests, the rake task would still recreate the database. Not the answer I was hoping for, but it isn’t a problem anymore.

The reason I was asking to begin with was because I did not have access to another database to use for testing, so I was using my development database for testing as well. But since then, I’ve been able to get another database dedicated for testing.

Thanks anyway Bohdan! I appreciate the help!