Getting rspec-acceptance (webdriver, no cucumber) to work correctly with fixture_builder and database_cleaner can be a bit of a drag.

It is actually not that hard and there are resources all over the inter tubes, you just have to find them.
For the sake of saving myself and some fellow programmers some time I will summarize the process we followed.

First, you need to make sure to have the fixture_builder, database_cleaner and while we’re at it headless gems installed.
Then the bulk of the work happens in acceptance_helper.rb, spec_helper.rb and fixture_builder.rb.

Details on what is in them are below. There are some notable things which I mention in context with the code.

spec_helper.rb

If you need you fixtures loaded in a particular order
you can load them in that order by specifying them as argument for the config.global_fixtures variable in spec_helper.

ENV["RAILS_ENV"] ||= 'test'
require File.expand_path("../../config/environment", __FILE__)
require 'rspec/rails'

Dir[Rails.root.join("spec/support/**/*.rb")].each {|f| require f}

RSpec.configure do |config|

  config.include ObjectCreationHelper
  config.include ObjectCreationMethods
  config.mock_with :rspec

  config.global_fixtures = :all

  # Remove this line if you're not using ActiveRecord or ActiveRecord fixtures
  config.fixture_path = "#{::Rails.root}/spec/fixtures"

  # If you're not using ActiveRecord, or you'd prefer not to run each of your
  # examples within a transaction, remove the following line or assign false
  # instead of true.
  config.use_transactional_fixtures = true

  config.before(js: nil) do
    config.use_transactional_fixtures = true
  end

end

accptance_helper.rb

Here headless (enables running selenium tests on a ci-server without a browser) and data_base cleaner are set up.
Database_cleaner will clean everything in the specified interval (in my case after each test) unless tables are specified in the “except” option for the database_cleaner strategy.
It is important to turn transactional fixtures off before running specs that require js and turn them back on after they have run
to ensure rspec spec still runs, assuming that there are spec files that have both test that require js and some that don’t require js.

require 'spec_helper'
require 'capybara/rspec'
require 'capybara/rails'
require 'database_cleaner'
require 'headless'

headless = Headless.new
headless.start

at_exit do
  unless ENV['RUNNING_CI']
    headless.destroy
  end
end

def build_fixtures
  Fixtures.reset_cache
  fixtures_folder = File.join(Rails.root.to_s, 'spec', 'fixtures')
  fixtures = Dir[File.join(fixtures_folder, '*.yml')].map { |f| File.basename(f, '.yml') }
  DatabaseCleaner.clean
  Fixtures.create_fixtures(fixtures_folder, fixtures)
end

RSpec.configure do |config|
  config.before(:suite) do
    DatabaseCleaner.strategy = :truncation, {:except => %w[ ]}
    DatabaseCleaner.clean_with(:truncation)
  end

  # before each test that requires js, turn transactional fixtures off
  # build the fixtures and start the db cleaner
  config.before(js: true) do
    config.use_transactional_fixtures = false
    build_fixtures()
    DatabaseCleaner.start
  end

  # after each spec with js, turn transactional fixtures back on
  # rebuild fixtures
  config.after(:each, js: true) do
    config.use_transactional_fixtures = true
    build_fixtures()
  end
end

fixture_builder.rb

Pretty straight forward, some clean up and checking if fixtures need rebuilding. Since database_cleaner will try to clean all exisiting tables
it is important to exclude database views specifically.

FixtureBuilder::Configuration.class_eval do

  def rebuild_fixtures?
    (@file_hashes != read_config) || Dir.glob('spec/fixtures/**/*.yml').empty?
  end

  def files_to_check
    @files_to_check ||= []
  end

  def delete_tables
    ActiveRecord::Base.connection.execute('SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=0')
    tables.each { |t| ActiveRecord::Base.connection.delete(delete_sql % ActiveRecord::Base.connection.quote_table_name(t)) }
  ensure
    ActiveRecord::Base.connection.execute('SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=1')
  end

end

FixtureBuilder.configure do |builder|
  builder.files_to_check = Dir["spec/support/fixture_builder.rb"]
  builder.skip_tables += ["current_post_stats_view"]
  builder.factory do

    united_states = Country.create! :name => "United States", :country_code => "US"
    Country.create! :name => "Canada", :country_code => "CA"

    admin_user = User.create! do |user|
      user.first_name = "Admin"
      user.last_name = "User"
      user.email = "admin@super_site_.com"
      user.password = "password"
      user.password_confirmation = "password"
      user.role = "admin"
    end
    name("admin", admin_user)

  end
end

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