Active Record Spec Helper - Loading just active record

.rspec

--colour
-I app

active_record_spec_helper.rb

require 'active_record'

connection_info = YAML.load_file("config/database.yml")["test"]
ActiveRecord::Base.establish_connection(connection_info)

RSpec.configure do |config|
  config.around do |example|
    ActiveRecord::Base.transaction do
      example.run
      raise ActiveRecord::Rollback
    end
  end
end

coderetreat.rb

class Coderetreat < ActiveRecord::Base
  def self.running_today
    where(scheduled_on: Date.today)
  end
end

coderetreat_spec.rb

require 'active_record_spec_helper'
require 'models/coderetreat'

describe Coderetreat do
  describe ".running_today" do
    it "returns a coderetreat scheduled for today" do
      coderetreat = Coderetreat.create! city: "Chicago", scheduled_on: Date.today
      Coderetreat.running_today.all.should =~ [coderetreat]
    end

    it "does not return a coderetreat not scheduled for today" do
      coderetreat = Coderetreat.create! city: "Chicago", scheduled_on: Date.today.advance(:days => -1)
      Coderetreat.running_today.should be_empty
    end
  end
end

spec_helper.rb

#Some databases get upset if you try to start a new transaction while a transaction is already in play, so running the whole spec suite chokes when rspec is trying to start a transaction. You need to update your spec_helper to rely on active_record_spec_helper to do this for you.

#Replace this line
    config.use_transactional_fixtures = true

#With this
require 'active_record_spec_helper'

#TADA

I love this idea, and I really want to implement it more in my test suites. But I'm having the problem that my ActiveRecord models just have too damn many dependencies, and I have to add so many "requires" at the top of my spec file that I might as well just require spec_helper.

Of course, the obvious solution here is to reduce the number of dependencies. And in some cases this is pretty easy, but it's often not, because a lot of the dependencies are due to my associations.

E.g. say I have an model User that looks like this:

class Comment < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :design
end

If I set up my spec like this:

require 'active_record_spec_helper'

require "comment"

describe Comment do
  ... whatever
end

... then it will fail, because when it tries to load "comment.rb", it hits the line belongs_to :design, and starts looking for a Design class - which hasn't been required, so the whole thing crashes with uninitialized constant Comment::Design.

So I add require 'design' to the top of my spec - but within my Design class I have the line belongs_to :user, which crashes with uninitialized constant Design::User... so I add require 'user' to the top of my spec, which hits the line has_many :posts and raises uninitialized constant User::Post... and so on until I've required almost my entire app/models directory.

Is there something conceptual I'm missing? How do I get around this? Basic Rails associations don't seem like something I should be refactoring out into a separate class or module, and stubbing out the associations feels a bit icky too (plus I'm not entirely sure how to do it anyway.)

Anyone have any pointers?

Sorry, me again. StackOverflow bounty is available to anyone who can help me out with the above question:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/27427072/requiring-an-activerecord-model-without-having-to-require-the-entire-class-diagr

Did anyone came up with a solution to the question of georgemillo? I also struggle with the idea of loading all dependent models, which is undesireable to me.