How to run Rails console in the test environment and load test_helper.rb?

Question

The background: I\'m having some problems with Thoughtbot\'s \"Factory Girl\" gem, with is used to create objects to use in unit and other tests. I\'d like to go to the cons

Answer 1

In Rails 3, just do rails console test or rails console production or rails console development (which is the default).

Answer 2

Test Env

rails console test # or just rails c test

Developement Env

rails console # or just rails c

Answer 3

Make sure you installed the GEM and you added the following line either in your environment.rb or test.rb file.

config.gem "thoughtbot-factory_girl", :lib => "factory_girl", :source => "http://gems.github.com"

Answer 4

script/console test

Should be all you need.

Answer 5

I share the asker's pain. There are really three separate questions here, some of which are addressed, some not:

1. How do you start the console in the test environment?

   For recent Rails versions, bundle exec rails c test, or alternative syntaxes for that.

2. How do you ensure that test/test_helper.rb is loaded into that console session?

   Something like require './test/test_helper' ought to do it.

   For me, this returns true, indicating that it was not already loaded when I started the console. If that statement returns false, then you just wasted a few keystrokes, but you're still good to go.

3. Once test_helper is loaded, how do you call the methods defined in it?

   In a typical test_helper, the custom methods are typically defined as instance methods of ActiveSupport::TestCase. So if you want to call one of them, you need an instance of that class. By trial and error, ActiveSupport::TestCase.new has one required parameter, so...pass it something.

   If your test_helper has a method called create_user, you could invoke it this way: ActiveSupport::TestCase.new("no idea what this is for").create_user

Answer 6

You can specify the environment in which the console command should operate.

rails c [environment]

Examples

1) For Staging

rails c staging

2) For Production

rails c production

For source & detailed description: The Rails Command Line