Hi Colin, Thanks for the response. Good point about legacy data. In fact, I'm working on a legacy system that I'd like to start integrating Rails into. Would you happen to know of resources that focus on that?
Why do I care that fixtures bypass validations? I've been using Agile Web Development with Rails 4th Ed. to learn Rails. On page 83 it says "a test fixture is simply a specification of the initial contents of a model (or models) under test." I was assuming that to the degree that statement is accurate, the validations coded in the model would be run against the data loaded by the fixtures. Then, when I saw that wasn't happening, I was surprised to find no statements about running or not running validations. For example,see http://guides.rubyonrails.org/testing.html Everything you pointed out ("the purpose of fixtures....") makes sense. But I can also see that it would be useful to have a rake parm that lets the developer control whether or not validations are run on the fixtures. >From what I've been reading, and one of the reasons I'm finding Rails so appealing, is that (as DHH said) Rails is an opinionated framework and has a clear and strong stance on how to build good software. With that in mind, I was hoping to learn the reasons behind why fixtures work the way they do. Thanks again for your response. Chris On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 5:55 AM, Colin Law <clan...@googlemail.com> wrote: > On 19 December 2011 02:47, Chris Downey <cdow...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Hello, > > > > I'm pretty new to Rails - very impressed not only by how much faster I > can > > create working programs but also by how it helps me to think more clearly > > about design. > > > > What has me confused is why does the fixture loading process bypass model > > validation? There must be a good reason for this, but I've been digging > > around for hours and can't find any explanation. > > The purpose of fixtures is for testing, if you decide that you want > something in the database for testing then that is up to you, even if > it might seem that there should be no way of getting that data under > normal operation. Remember that one might wish to test against legacy > data in a database that was added before some validation was added. > Also there may be routes other than rails for getting data there, > bypassing the validations. > > Why do you care that fixtures bypass validations? > > As a side note fixtures are generally considered to not be the best > way of testing. Most now use Factories I believe. > > I advise newcomers to ignore fixtures and go straight to Factories. > > Colin > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Ruby on Rails: Talk" group. > To post to this group, send email to rubyonrails-talk@googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > rubyonrails-talk+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk?hl=en. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby on Rails: Talk" group. To post to this group, send email to rubyonrails-talk@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rubyonrails-talk+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk?hl=en.
