How to properly test with a populated database?

[Stefan Franck]

Hi,

I'm rather new to the play framework, and currently trying to prepare and test a model. I'm wondering how to populate a database and retrieve the values put into it for e.g. testing find methods. Here's what I'm doing at the moment:

I extended withApplication to prepare data setup: 

class WithDBApplication(app: Application) extends WithApplication {

  

  override def around[T: AsResult](t: => T): Result = super.around {

    setupData()

    t

  }

  

  def setupData() = {

    val items   = Generator.generateTestItems()    

   }

}

The generateTestItems basically creates items, persists them in the DB and returns a list of the generated items to test e.g. look-ups.

In my test case, I'm trying to do the following:

class ItemServiceTest extends Specification {

  "ItemService.findById" should {

    "find existing id" in new WithDBApplication(app) {

      val testItem = ???

      ItemService.findById(testItem.id) must beSome[Item].which {

        item => item == testItem

      }

    }
  }

}

For the testItem, I want to access one of the items the DB has been populated with. How can I access these items? Or am I doing something completely wrong in this setup?

I'm running play framework 2.3.

Thanks for any help, 

Stefan

[Stefan Franck]

In the meantime I found this blog post, which seems to deal with a similar issue:

http://thelearningcollective.nyc/adventures-in-setupteardown-with-specs2-play/

But I agree with the author, there seems to be an awful lot of boilerplate code. Is it possible to achieve the same result with less clutter?