database_cleaner is wiping my development database

Question

I have database-cleaner configured for my rails 4 application, Each time I run the test, I discovered that my database gets wiped out in both the test and development environment.

My configurations are in rails_helper as follow:

ENV["RAILS_ENV"] ||= 'test'
# This file is copied to spec/ when you run 'rails generate rspec:install'
require 'spec_helper'
require File.expand_path("../../config/environment", __FILE__)
require 'rspec/rails'
require 'database_cleaner'
Rails.env = "test"
# Add additional requires below this line. Rails is not loaded until this point!

# Requires supporting ruby files with custom matchers and macros, etc, in
# spec/support/ and its subdirectories. Files matching `spec/**/*_spec.rb` are
# run as spec files by default. This means that files in spec/support that end
# in _spec.rb will both be required and run as specs, causing the specs to be
# run twice. It is recommended that you do not name files matching this glob to
# end with _spec.rb. You can configure this pattern with the --pattern
# option on the command line or in ~/.rspec, .rspec or `.rspec-local`.
#
# The following line is provided for convenience purposes. It has the downside
# of increasing the boot-up time by auto-requiring all files in the support
# directory. Alternatively, in the individual `*_spec.rb` files, manually
# require only the support files necessary.
#
# 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.maintain_test_schema!

RSpec.configure do |config|
  # 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

  # RSpec Rails can automatically mix in different behaviours to your tests
  # based on their file location, for example enabling you to call `get` and
  # `post` in specs under `spec/controllers`.
  #
  # You can disable this behaviour by removing the line below, and instead
  # explicitly tag your specs with their type, e.g.:
  #
  #     RSpec.describe UsersController, :type => :controller do
  #       # ...
  #     end
  #
  # The different available types are documented in the features, such as in
  # https://relishapp.com/rspec/rspec-rails/docs
  config.infer_spec_type_from_file_location!

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

  config.before(:each) do
    DatabaseCleaner.strategy = :transaction
  end

  config.before(:each, :js => true) do
    DatabaseCleaner.strategy = :truncation
  end

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

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


  config.mock_with :rspec

  config.before(:all) do
    ActiveRecord::Base.skip_callbacks = true
  end

  config.after(:all) do
    ActiveRecord::Base.skip_callbacks = false
  end

end

How can I ensure that the cleaner only wipes the db in test environment without touching my development?

My database.yml is as follow:

# PostgreSQL. Versions 8.2 and up are supported.
#
# Install the pg driver:
#   gem install pg
# On OS X with Homebrew:
#   gem install pg -- --with-pg-config=/usr/local/bin/pg_config
# On OS X with MacPorts:
#   gem install pg -- --with-pg-config=/opt/local/lib/postgresql84/bin/pg_config
# On Windows:
#   gem install pg
#       Choose the win32 build.
#       Install PostgreSQL and put its /bin directory on your path.
#
# Configure Using Gemfile
# gem 'pg'
#
default: &default
  adapter: postgresql
  encoding: unicode
  # For details on connection pooling, see rails configuration guide
  # http://guides.rubyonrails.org/configuring.html#database-pooling
  pool: 5

development:
  <<: *default
  database: directory-service_development

  # The specified database role being used to connect to postgres.
  # To create additional roles in postgres see `$ createuser --help`.
  # When left blank, postgres will use the default role. This is
  # the same name as the operating system user that initialized the database.
  #username: directory-service

  # The password associated with the postgres role (username).
  #password:

  # Connect on a TCP socket. Omitted by default since the client uses a
  # domain socket that doesn't need configuration. Windows does not have
  # domain sockets, so uncomment these lines.
  #host: localhost

  # The TCP port the server listens on. Defaults to 5432.
  # If your server runs on a different port number, change accordingly.
  #port: 5432

  # Schema search path. The server defaults to $user,public
  #schema_search_path: myapp,sharedapp,public

  # Minimum log levels, in increasing order:
  #   debug5, debug4, debug3, debug2, debug1,
  #   log, notice, warning, error, fatal, and panic
  # Defaults to warning.
  #min_messages: notice

# 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:
  <<: *default
  database: directory-service_test

# As with config/secrets.yml, you never want to store sensitive information,
# like your database password, in your source code. If your source code is
# ever seen by anyone, they now have access to your database.
#
# Instead, provide the password as a unix environment variable when you boot
# the app. Read http://guides.rubyonrails.org/configuring.html#configuring-a-database
# for a full rundown on how to provide these environment variables in a
# production deployment.
#
# On Heroku and other platform providers, you may have a full connection URL
# available as an environment variable. For example:
#
#   DATABASE_URL="postgres://myuser:mypass@localhost/somedatabase"
#
# You can use this database configuration with:
#
#   production:
#     url: <%= ENV['DATABASE_URL'] %>
#
production:
  <<: *default
  database: directory-service_production
  username: directory-service
  password: <%= ENV['DIRECTORY-SERVICE_DATABASE_PASSWORD'] %>

Answer 1

Well, I'm not sure what I was doing wrong, but by undoing all the configurations I had for database_cleaner:

1. uninstalling the database_cleaner gem
2. removing all related configurations from both spec_helper and rails_helper

And then following this guide by Avdi Grimm, after re-installing the database_cleaner gem and also uncomment this line:

Dir[Rails.root.join("spec/support/**/*.rb")].each { |f| require f }

from my rails_helper, I was able to get the database_cleaner back to work as expected. Thank you all.

Answer 2

I'd recommend changing

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

to

ENV["RAILS_ENV"] = 'test'

and remove

Rails.env = 'test'

as the RAILS_ENV environment variable should be sufficient for configuration

Answer 3

I appreciate this is an old post but I had this issue today. I checked using pry and my ENV['RAILS_ENV'] = 'test' however my ENV['DATABASE_URL'] was set to my development db in the form of: postgres://localhost/my_dev_db

I added a line in the database cleaner config in rails_helper.rb to change to my test db like so:

  config.before(:suite) do
    ActiveRecord::Base.establish_connection(ENV['DATABASE_TEST'])
    DatabaseCleaner.clean_with(:truncation)
  end

where ENV['DATABASE_TEST'] was in the form of: postgres://localhost/my_test_db

This solved the issue for me.

Answer 4

If anyone is looking for another potential source of this issue, I randomly had $DATABASE_URL defined in my .bashrc file to point directly to my development database. Took me a few hours to find that.

Answer 5

For me the issue was having DatabaseCleaner.clean on the top level of rails_helper instead of within config.before(:suite).

Answer 6

In my case it was database connection specified in .env file when I used dotenv-rails gem. For some reasons database_cleaner prefer connection from there instead of rails application config.