On 21 Jul 2009, at 20:58, Tom Stuart wrote:
Hi,
A Rails project I'm working on has, for better or worse, some data-
driven structure in its models: a few model classes need certain
values (e.g. some enumerations) to be available in the database at
load time in order for certain bits of metaprogramming to kick off
correctly. It would be possible to do this all lazily instead of
when the classes load, but in reality the database values are always
there and everything already works beautifully so it's hard to
justify putting in the effort required to be that lazy.
The problem is that RSpec starts with an empty test database and I
can't see the best way or place to prepopulate it before the models
get loaded (i.e. when Rails bootstraps, since config.cache_classes =
true), ideally so that both rake spec and script/spec do the correct
setup in time. It would be incredibly convenient to be able to use
Fixtures.create_fixtures to do the loading so that the required data
can live in YAML fixtures, but maybe it's optimistic to try to do
that before Rails has loaded.
Or maybe I'm just going about this completely the wrong way, and
someone has a clever idea about what the right way is? That would be
brilliant.
One challenge for you before we dig into how to solve it the way
you've suggested: do you really need to keep these enumerables in the
database, or could you keep them in code? That is, is there a valid
use case where they will be altered at run-time, or do they change so
seldom that it would be OK to have to release a new version of the
code when they need to be changed?
I ask because these things tend to get a lot easier if you're not
having to mess around with databases, so it's always worth pushing
back on that one first.
cheers,
Matt Wynne
http://mattwynne.net
+447974 430184
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