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

user_42595 0
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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 console and run different Factory Girl calls to check out what's happening. For example, I'd like to go in there are do...

>> Factory(:user).inspect

I know that you can run the console in different environments...

$ script/console RAILS_ENV=test

But when I do that, Factory class is not available. It looks as though test_helper.rb is not getting loaded.

I tried various require calls including one with the absolute path to test_helper.rb but they fail similarly to this:

$ script/console RAILS_ENV=test
>> require '/Users/ethan/project/contactdb/test/test_helper.rb'
  Errno::ENOENT: No such file or directory - 
  /Users/ethan/project/contactdb/config/environments/RAILS_ENV=test.rb

Grr. Argh.

shoulda testing ruby-on-rails ruby
10 Answers

For Rails < 3.0

Run script/console --help. You'll notice that the syntax is script/console [environment], which in your case is script/console test.

I'm not sure if you have to require the test helper or if the test environment does that for you, but with that command you should at least be able to boot successfully into the test env.

As a sidenote: It is indeed kind of odd that the various binaries in script/ has different ways of setting the rails environment.

For Rails 3 and 4

Run rails c test. Prepend bundle exec if you need this for the current app environment.

For Rails 5 and 6

Run rails console -e test.

user_260510

For Rails 5.2.0: "Passing the environment's name as a regular argument is deprecated and will be removed in the next Rails version. Please, use the -e option instead."

rails c -e test
user_65723830 
script/console test

Should be all you need.

user_1008060

David Smith is correct, just do

script/console test

The help command will show why this works:

$ script/console -h
Usage: console [environment] [options]
    -s, --sandbox                    Rollback database modifications on exit.
        --irb=[irb]                  Invoke a different irb.
        --debugger                   Enable ruby-debugging for the console.

It's the [environment] bit.

user_4419600

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"
user_1235270

Command to run rails console test environment is 

rails c -e test

or

RAILS_ENV=test rails c

if you are facing problem something like 

ActiveRecord::StatementInvalid:
   Mysql2::Error: Table 'DB_test.users' doesn't exist: SHOW FULL FIELDS FROM `users`

then you should first prepare your test DB by running 

bundle exec rake db:test:prepare
user_82471330
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