MiniTest ruby class queries return nil

Question

I am running Rails 3.2.8 and using MinitTest spec for my testing. I have autotest manage my testing suite and everything works great except for one thing. I have a Contacts table that is managed by ActiveRecord with MySQL and a CsvImport custom ruby class that does not have a database table. When I run the application in IRB everything works as expected but when the test is ran through the test suite all the Contact.find / Contact.where / Contact.map query type calls that are in the Ruby class are returned nil.

Here is an example:

require 'test_helper'

class CsvRowManagerTest < MiniTest::Spec
  describe 'import tests' do
    let(:row) { Hash['name' => 'test'] }
    let(:rm) { CsvRowManager.new(row) }
    it "should return an array of stuff" do
      rm.contacts.wont_be_nil
    end
  end
end

class CsvRowManager
  attr_accessor :row, :contacts

  def initialize(row)
    @row = row
    @contacts = Contact.all.map(&:name) #<-- returns nil
  end

end

More of a demonstration than anything. Any ideas?

Answer 1

Turns out the test database wasn't cloning the data from development! Doh. Thanks for all the help you two; you pushed me in the right direction. @Blowmage even offered to remote debug my problem with me. What a kick ass dude!