Run Rails tests on Gitlab CI with a Postgres database

Gitlab CI can be used to run rails tests on every push. It’s pretty straight forward to setup.

First create a .gitlab-ci.yml file:

image: ruby:2.3

services:
  - postgres:latest

variables:
  POSTGRES_DB: dbname # set database
  POSTGRES_USER: username # set username
  POSTGRES_PASSWORD: ""

before_script:
  - apt-get update -qy
  - apt-get install -y nodejs
  - bundle install --path /cache

# run tests
test:
  script:
    - cp config/database-gitlab.yml config/database.yml
    - bundle exec rake db:create RAILS_ENV=test
    - bundle exec rake test

The before_script installs everything we need to run the tests. test job creates the database and executes the tests.

Next, create a gitlab specific database config config/database-gitlab.yml to connect to the database setup earlier.

test: adapter: postgresql
pool: 5
timeout: 5000
host: postgres
database: dbname # set database
user: username # set username

Now the tests will be run on each push!