Is there some way to change Rails environments mid-way through a test? Or, alternately, what would be the right way to set up a test suite that can start up Rails in one environment, run the first half of my test in it, then restart Rails in another environment to finish the test? The two environments have separate databases.
Some necessary context: I'm writing a Rails plugin that allows multiple installations of a Rails app to communicate with each other with user assistance, so that a user without Internet access can still use the app. They'll run a local version of an app, and upload their work to the online app by saving a file to a thumbdrive and taking it to an Internet cafe.
The plugin adds two special environments to Rails: "offline-production" and "offline-test". I want to write functional tests that involve both the "test" and "offline-test" environments, to represent the main online version of the app and the local offline version of the app respectively.
Edit: I've been reading up on Rack::Test, and it seems like it might be the way to go, because it places the testing framework outside of rails itself. But I still have no idea how I can use it to do a test that involves more than one environment. Any ideas, anyone?