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I have a project in which I use ActiveRecord to store information in a sqlite db file. I'm not using Rails and AR seems to do the job perfectly. My question is how exactly to test my classes witout hitting the db? I found some gems that would to the trick (FactoryGirl, UnitRecord), but they are meant to work with Rails.

class News < ActiveRecord::Base belongs_to :feed def delete_old_news_if_necessary # time_limit = Settings::time_limit return if time_limit.zero? News.destroy_all("date < #{time_limit}") end def delete_news_for_feed(feed_id) News.destroy_all(:id => feed_id) end def news_for_feed(feed_id) News.find(feed_id) end end

I read that i can do a column stub:

Column = ActiveRecord::ConnectionAdapters::Column News.stubs(:columns).returns([Column.new(),...])

Is this the right way to do these tests? Also, when is it better to have a separate db just for testing and to create it, run the tests, and the delete it?

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If you want to avoid hitting the db in tests I can recommend the mocha gem. It does stubs as well as it lets you define expectations.

Edit: Regarding your question on when it is better to use a test db: I would say, whenever there is no reason against it. :)

Edit: For example, you can mock News.find like this in a test:

def news_for_feed_test # define your expectations: news = News.new News.expects(:find).with(1).returns(news) # call the method to be tested: News.new.news_for_feed(1) end

At the same time this makes sure, find gets called exactly once. There are a lot more things Mocha can do for you. Take a look at the documentation. Btw., it looks like these methods of yours should be class methods, no?

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Can you give me an example with tests for one of my methods using mocha, just to get an idea of what exactly am I mocking?