create table people (

id int not null auto_increment,

target int null default null,

name varchar(50) not null,

primary key(id)

);

that has a column target which can be null.  In my development database many people have null values for target.  

In my unit tests, I want to be able to use all the people (a couple of hundred), so I exported people from MySQL 4.1.12-standard in CSV format using the following command:

select * into outfile '/tmp/people.csv' fields terminated by ',' optionally enclosed by '"' lines terminated by '\n' from people;

That gives me a CSV file with null values represented as \N

According to the fixtures documentation, to get a null value inserted into your test database from a CSV, you should have nothing between the commas.  

 

"nulls can be achived by just placing a comma, for example, (1,sclaus,,false,) minus the parenthesis of course."

http://manuals.rubyonrails.com/read/chapter/26

So I went through and replaced \N with nothing ... as a result rows that previously looked like:

7,\N,"Steve"

now look like

7,,"Steve"

The rails unit test libraries load the fixture without any complaints. 

BUT....

wherever I had a null for target in my development database, I now have a 0 my test database.

This is a problem because 0 is an illegal value for a target... targets must be positive or non-existant.  As a result, the validation on my model (person.rb::validate) is failing and my unit tests are throwing errors.

As a work around, I commented out my validate, but I'd like to turn it back on.

I'm running the following:

Mac OSX 10.4.5

Ruby 1.8.2 (2004-12-25) [powerpc-darwin8.0]

Rails 1.0.0

Thanks for any help.

-Steve