`relation "action_text_rich_texts" does not exist` in CircleCI

Another short post about obscure errors. Ran into this weirdness yesterday/this morning:

rake aborted!
ActiveRecord::StatementInvalid: PG::UndefinedTable: ERROR:  relation "action_text_rich_texts" does not exist
LINE 8:  WHERE a.attrelid = '"action_text_rich_texts"'::regclass

Just came out of nowhere.

Everything I found online seemed to suggest that I simply needed to run the relevant migration or install ActionText again...

rails action_text:install

And that's perfectly reasonable when the error occurs in the dev environment. Sadly, this didn't work when I ran it here...

CircleCI: UndefinedTable

It's worth noting that at this point I already had a working CircleCI config and had already successfully run tests even after I'd added an ActionText::RichText column to an earlier table.

I tried experimenting with the rake tasks I'd already added in .circleci/config.yml but the error still wouldn't budge.

I was almost at my wit's end when I found the post below:

require 'factory_girl_rails' - https://discuss.circleci.com/t/pg-undefinedtable-error-relation-users-does-not-exist/4250

The post is a little old so when Nesokas refers to "factorygirl", they're actually referring to the factory_bot_rails gem (Thoughtbot changed the name - it was a whole thing). Following those instructions fixed the error message.

So in short, if you see that error, add

gem 'rspec-rails', '~> 4.0.0.beta2'

to your Gemfile, run the following in the terminal:

bundle

Add the this to spec/rails_helper.rb:

require 'factory_bot_rails'

And then push it to your branch

git add -A
git commit -m "Fix CircleCI error"
git push origin HEAD

The error should clear up in no time!

Anyway, props to Nesokas for working this out as it's a bizarre error to get and the solution is far from obvious. I would link to their social media but I can't really find them anywhere else so... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯