How do I get an ENV variable set for rspec?

Question

I'm using foreman to start up my rails development server. It's nice that I can put all of my environment variables in the .env file. Is there a way to do something similar for my test environment?

I want to set an API key that I will use with the vcr gem, but I don't want to add the API to version control. Any suggestions besides setting the environment variable manually when I start up my tests script?

Solution 1

You can use the dotenv gem --- it'll work the same as foreman and load from a .env file. (and a .env.test file for your test environments)

https://github.com/bkeepers/dotenv

Solution 2

If you just need to set environment variables, you can either set them from command-line:

SOMETHING=123 SOMETHING_ELSE="this is a test" rake spec

Or you could define the following at the top of your Rakefile or spec_helper.rb:

ENV['SOMETHING']=123
ENV['SOMETHING_ELSE']="this is a test"

If they don't always apply, you could use a conditional:

if something_needs_to_happen?
  ENV['SOMETHING']=123
  ENV['SOMETHING_ELSE']="this is a test"
end

If you want to use a Foreman .env file, which looks like:

SOMETHING=123
SOMETHING_ELSE="this is a test"

and turn it into the following and eval it:

ENV['SOMETHING']='123'
ENV['SOMETHING_ELSE']='this is a test'

You might do:

File.open("/path/to/.env", "r").each_line do |line|
  a = line.chomp("\n").split('=',2)
  a[1].gsub!(/^"|"$/, '') if ['\'','"'].include?(a[1][0])
  eval "ENV['#{a[0]}']='#{a[1] || ''}'"
end

though I don't think that would work for multi-line values.

And as @JesseWolgamott noted, it looks like you could use gem 'dotenv-rails'.

Solution 3

One option is to alias the rspec command to be a little more specific. Put the following line in your dotfiles (.bashrc or .profile or something).

alias 'rspec'='RACK_ENV=test RAILS_ENV=test bundle exec rspec'

Another option is to put environment variables in specific .env files:

# .env.test

RAILS_ENV=test
MONGODB_URI=mongodb://localhost/test
# .. etc ..

Using the dotenv gem works or you can bring them in manually

$ export $(cat .env.test) && rspec

Comments

[Jesse Wolgamott]

or, as an alternative, you can RAILS_ENV=test foreman run bundle exec rspec spec

[Dave Sag]

That's exactly what I was looking for. Thanks

[fagiani]

This answer is specially better because it offers approaches that won't rely on any specific gem specially when using minimalistic frameworks like Sinatra. Thanks!