FixtureReplacement

Just added a FixtureReplacement cheatsheet to the Knowledge Base, seeing as the only documentation for the plug-in at the moment is in the form of a screencast (which isn’t too easy to consult!).

Normally I don’t like overloading a Rails application with a zillion plug-ins but this one gets in for the following reasons:

• It’s extremely simple: it only takes a couple of minutes to examine the code, understand how it works, and have a high degree of confidence in its functionality.
• It’s a test-time only plug-in so it won’t bog down your deployed production application.
• It makes it much easier to write specs, and easier to understand them once you’ve written them, because it allows you to focus on only the salient parts of the models (and model object graphs) that you’re testing.
• Your example data is much easier to maintain and less brittle than traditional Rails fixtures.

If you haven’t watched the screencast I encourage you to check it out now (the link can be found here).