Testing Multiple Rubies and Databases on Travis CI

21 Mar 2013

rails, testing

Why should I test multiple versions & databases Rspec tests for Rails project Travis CI for Github public repo Multiple ruby versions & database types Credits

Why should I test multiple versions & databases

In the Ruby community, it’s expected that your open source projects should have automated testing. It gives other developers who use your code confidence that your code works as expected and rather than crashing their production app (as fun as that is to deal with). With the additional of free remote automated testing, testing and publishing results is dead simple.

This has been a huge leap forward for the open source community.

I think the next leap forward is to intentionally test against language versions and infrastructure components (databases) outside the scope of your initial project. Why? If I create and test a Ruby gem against MySQL but you want to use it with Postgresql, how do know the code is a solid solution for your Postgresql infrastructure? You don’t unless you dig through my the code.

But, the purpose of being a developer is NOT coding or programming. Being a developer is about choosing how and when to leverage code & systems (for more on this view point, see True Nature of Code).

Let’s setup testing within a Rails app and configure these 9 different setps. https://travis-ci.org/westonplatter/example_travisci_multi

Rspec testing a Rails project

I use Rspec for testing Rails applications, but your actual testing framework could be anything. Thus, starting with a new rails project, let’s install the rspec-rails gem into our rails project.

# create the rails app
rails new example_travisci_multi
cd example_travisci_multi

# add rspec-rails to Gemfile
echo 'gem "rspec-rails"' >> Gemfile
bundle install
rails generate rspec:install

# create rails testable resource
rails generate scaffold Post title:string

# run rspec
rake db:migrate
rake db:test:preapre
rake spec

How do we know which Ruby version and which database we are using?

rake about

# About your application's environment
# Ruby version              1.9.3 (x86_64-darwin12.2.1)
# ...
# Database adapter          sqlite3
# ...

Let’s get Ruby 1.9.3 and Sqlite3 working with Travis CI before we expand to other Rubies and Databases.

Travis CI for Github public repo

Having created a Rails project, configured your test framework, and confirmed your tests run, let’s configure it with Travis CI (free for open source projects). We’ll assume your code is hosted on Github as a public project.

Go to the Github project admin panel, click on serivce hooks section, (EG, https://github.com/GITHUB_USERNAME/REPO_NAME/settings/hooks).
If you haven’t setup a travis ci account, do so. Go to [https://travis-ci.org](https://travis-ci.org/), and click on “Sign in with Github”.
Copy and paste your Travis CI token from here, https://travis-ci.org/profile/GITHUB_USERNAME/profile, into the Github Token text box.
Check the Active check box.

Add a .travis.yml file to the Rails root directory, notice we are responsible for running the migrations,

# example_travisci_multi/.travis.yml

language: ruby

rvm:
  - 1.9.3

before_script:
  - rake db:migrate

# uncomment this line if your project needs to run something other than `rake`:
# script: bundle exec rspec spec

Commit. Push to github. Travis CI will automatically run your tests.
View your test status & results on Travis CI, https://travis-ci.org/GITHUB_USERNAME/REPO_NAME

Multiple ruby versions & database types

Now for some Travis CI power. Let’s test the Rails project against multiple databases and multiple ruby versions. We’ll need to change the following files,

.travis.yml

# example_travisci_multi/.travis.yml

language: ruby

# creates 3 variable build maxtix. 1 each for a different RVM version
rvm:
  - 2.0.0
  - 1.9.3
  - jruby-19mode

# adds 3 variables to each build matrix.
env:
  - DB=sqlite
  - DB=mysql
  - DB=postgresql


# the result, 9 different build matricies. more about this,
# http://about.travis-ci.org/docs/user/build-configuration/#The-Build-Matrix


# add the extra shell commands to ensure the db exits, the
# migrations have ben run, and the development env schema has
# been applied to the test database.
#
before_script:
  - rake db:create
  - rake db:migrate
  - rake db:test:prepare

# uncomment this line if your project needs to run something other than `rake`:
# script: bundle exec rspec spec

database.yml

We need to change how the database drivers are loaded to support MRI Ruby and JRuby database connectors. In brief, the database connector is decided by the travis shell variable, ENV['DB'], defaulting to sqlite. Notice the mysql connection has double nested boolean logic to change the adapter name between ‘mysql’ for ruby and ‘mysql2’ for JRuby.

I copied most of this from Matthew McEachen’s awsome travis ci post. We’ll tweak the mysql group to account for JRuby.

# example_travisci_multi/config/database.yml

sqlite: &sqlite
adapter: sqlite3

mysql: &mysql
  adapter: mysql<%= "2" unless ( ENV["TRAVIS_RUBY_VERSION"].include? "j" if ENV["TRAVIS_RUBY_VERSION"] ) %>
  username: root
  password:

postgresql: &postgresql
  adapter: postgresql
  username: postgres
  password:
  min_messages: ERROR

defaults: &defaults
  pool: 5
  timeout: 5000
  host: localhost
  <<: *<%= ENV['DB'] || "sqlite" %>

development:
  database: example_travisci_multi_dev
  <<: *defaults

test:
  database: example_travisci_multi_test
  <<: *defaults

production:
  database: example_travisci_multi_prod
  <<: *defaults

Gemfile

Since MRI Ruby and JRuby use different database drivers, we need to conditionally select the appropriate adapter for installation in the Gemfile.

# example_travisci_multi/Gemfile

source 'https://rubygems.org'

gem 'rails', '3.2.13'

group :assets do
  gem 'sass-rails',   '~> 3.2.3'
  gem 'coffee-rails', '~> 3.2.1'
  gem 'uglifier', '>= 1.0.3'
end

gem 'jquery-rails'

gem "rspec-rails"



## AND ADD THIS
#
group :development, :test do
  platforms :jruby do
    gem 'activerecord-jdbcsqlite3-adapter'
    gem 'activerecord-jdbcmysql-adapter'
    gem 'activerecord-jdbcpostgresql-adapter'
    gem 'jruby-openssl'
  end

  platforms :mri do
    gem 'sqlite3'
    gem 'mysql2'
    gem 'pg'
  end
end

Credits

Rock star points to Matthew McEachen for his blog post about setting up Rails + Travis CI for multiple databases.

westonplatter