Invoking database cleaner between retries

[swaroopmurthy]

We have a flaky test suite of >2500 tests that invokes DatabaseCleaner between tests. Despite having a retry count of 3, we're seeing issues like unique constraint violated and record already exists...

Is there a way to explicitly invoke DatabaseCleaner between each retry attempt?

[michaelglass]

there is no current api exposed for this functionality, see #33 if you want to add it!

[tye]

If you put DatabaseCleaner in before/after hooks instead of an around hook then your db will get cleaned between retries.

My rspec config looks something like this:

config.before(:each) do |example|
  DatabaseCleaner.start
end

config.after(:each) do |example|
  Capybara.reset_sessions! if example.metadata[:js]
  DatabaseCleaner.clean
end

config.around(:each) do |example|
  if example.metadata[:js]
    example.run_with_retry retry: 3
  else
    example.run
  end
end

If you're using Capybara you will need to call Capybara.reset_sessions! before cleaning the database in the after hook.

[michaelglass]

@abrom just added between retry hooks, too (#50)

[joao-esteves]

Came across this and it should be helpful to leave my findings.

Unlike what's said above, DatabaseCleaner.cleaning do inside an around hook is cleaning the database between retries as of now. It was something else polluting my DB.

Check your retry_callback. In my case, I was printing a variable from a macro for debugging. It is an ActiveRecord object with FactoryGirl. The thing is that DatabaseCleaner was removing it from the DB before this method, so by printing the variable I was rerunning the macro and reinserting it in the DB with no DatabaseCleaner.cleaning block to remove it.