thoughtbot / factory_girl

Reported by Eric Mill

#13 describes syntactic sugar for one-off sequences inside factory definitions. This request is to expand that, and allow for easy referencing of separately defined sequences.

Referencing a separately defined sequence by name:

Factory.define :user do |u|
  u.sequence :email, :user_email
end

Factory.sequence(:user_email {|n| "user#{n}@mail.com"}

Auto-referencing a separately defined sequence by using the same name:

Factory.define :user do |u|
  u.sequence :email
end

Factory.sequence(:email) {|n| "user#{n}@mail.com"}

And here's a crazier, but cooler idea at syntax, that assumes that a symbol passed as an attribute value refers to the name of a sequence:

Factory.define :user do |u|
  u.email :user_email
end

Factory.sequence(:user_email) {|n| "user#{n}@mail.com"}

The last example would eliminate the need for supporting either of the first two.

Reported by Joe Ferris

Proxy objects are responsible for returning values of previously defined attributes, but you can't reference "id" and other attributes that conflict with methods on Object.

Proxy should either undefine these methods so that method_missing is called, or directly delegate them to #get.

Reported by Erik

The method variable_name_to_class_name has code that translates, say, 'active_record/base' to ActiveRecord::Base. But when I tried to use this, I got a 'wrong constant name' error, because constant names can't contain colons.

You can just supply a :class option, but it would be easier not to. I'm planning to fix the code and document the shortcut.

Here's my fix: http://github.com/eostrom/factory_girl/tree/guess_classes_in_modules

Reported by Peter Suschlik

Branch on github: http://github.com/splattael/factory_girl/tree/global_default_strategy

It's like :default_strategy option but for all factories:

Factory.global_default_strategy = :build

Factory.define(:post) {}
...
Factory(:post) # => like Factory.build(:post)

No need for :default_strategy => :build every time.

Note:
I don't like the name global_default_strategy.
Factory.default_strategy = :build would be nicer but I didn't want to hack up the current default_strategy method.

Reported by Alex Rothenberg

When I have a model class defined within a module FactoryGirl was unable to find the class correctly because it was not traversing down the module hierarchy.

The fix along with a spec that fails before and passes after are at http://github.com/alexrothenberg/factory_girl/commits/factories_for_classes_with_modules_patch

My scenario is that I have a model defined in a module

module BlogModels
  class Comment < ActiveRecord::Base
  end
end

and want to define a factory for it like this

Factory.define 'blog_models/comment' do |comment|
end

It fails with this error

1)
NameError in 'Factory a factory defined with a module name should load the class defined inside the module'
wrong constant name GroupingOfModels::Comment
/Users/alexrothenberg/ruby/github/factory_girl/spec/../lib/factory_girl/factory.rb:304:in `const_get'
/Users/alexrothenberg/ruby/github/factory_girl/spec/../lib/factory_girl/factory.rb:304:in `class_for'
/Users/alexrothenberg/ruby/github/factory_girl/spec/../lib/factory_girl/factory.rb:58:in `build_class'
./spec/factory_girl/factory_spec.rb:306:

Patching the class_for method in factory.rb to go down the module hierarchy as it loads the class fixes the problem.

I hope this is not too much information in the ticket but I thought it was better to err with too much rather than too little :)

Thanks
Alex

When creating a factory that has a parent defined, attributes defined in blocks don't have scope to parent attributes because the parent's attributes haven't been added to the factory yet.

I've created a branch that resolves this incorrect behavior: http://github.com/joshuaclayton/factory_girl/commits/parent-attributes-in-attribute-blocks

Singleton factories are useful for creating unique instances, such as a fixed set of movie genres. The branch at http://github.com/roderickvd/factory_girl/tree/singletons adds the following syntax to do just that:

# Defines a new singleton
Factory.define :comedy, :class => Genre, :singleton => true do |g|
  g.name 'Comedy'
end

Because the singleton option is set on the factory, it works seamlessly for associations and all strategies.

I've created a branch which makes the stubbing strategy more friendly for non-AR classes.
http://github.com/sandro/factory_girl/tree/stub_for_non_ar_objects

The main issue is that the stubbing proxy calls #new which won't work if #initialize takes requires arguments. The fix is to fall back to #allocate when #new fails.

Factory.define :building, :class => Building::Mothership do |m|
m.x 0 m.x_end { |r| r.x + r.instance_variable_get("@instance").class.property('width') } end

It would be nice to just be able to

Factory.define :building, :class => Building::Mothership do |m|
m.x 0 m.x_end { |r, options| r.x + options[:class].property('width') } end

ActiveRecord and DataMapper share a significant amount of API. Enough at least to allow factory_girl to work with both. The following patch maintains compatibility.

please pull me

Problem: a factory define that has a parent seems to be failing because the parent isn't loaded yet.

Example:

test/factories/person.rb
  Factory.define :person do |p|
    p.name 'Joe'
  end

test/factories/person_with_extras.rb
  Factory.define :person_with_extras, :parent => :person do |p|
    p.age 21
  end

Using the code above gives this error: No such factory: person.

Is it correct that a factory can have a parent like this, in a different file?

When I look in the gem factory.rb, it seems that the load order is inconsistent on line 276:

  Dir[File.join(path, '*.rb')].each do |file|

I would expect at least for the files to be in alphabetic order:

  - Dir[File.join(path, '*.rb')].each do |file|
  + Dir[File.join(path, '*.rb')].sort.each do |file|

Is there something obvious that I'm missing?

Or is it supposed to be this way?

Could the Thoughtbot team at least add the "sort" to the file list?

Much obliged,
Joel Parker Henderson
joelparkerhenderson@gmail.com

We've got quite a few namespaced models in our codebase, and so far we've had no troubles specifying factories for them like so:

factory :namespace_foo, :class => Namespace::Foo do |nsf|
  nsf.foo 'foo'
  nsf.bar 'bar'
end

However now working with Spork in our specs, I'm trying to prevent the constants from being loaded so early, so I changed all the constants to strings.

factory :namespace_foo, :class => 'Namespace::Foo' do |nsf|
  nsf.foo 'foo'
  nsf.bar 'bar'
end

But now all my factories break with NameError Exception: wrong constant name

This is just a simple matter of changing the way that factory_girl calls Object#const_get. I'm forking and I'll link a branch with the fix shortly.

Factory.attributes_for(:appointment) => {:provider=>nil, :patient=>nil, :start_time=>"8:00", :end_time=>"10:00", :office=>nil}

but

Factory.build(:appointment).attributes => {"kind"=>nil, "end_time"=>Thu, 24 Dec 2009 10:00:00 UTC +00:00, "created_at"=>nil, "provider_id"=>101, "updated_at"=>nil, "patient_id"=>21, "appointment_date"=>nil, "description"=>nil, "start_time"=>Thu, 24 Dec 2009 08:00:00 UTC +00:00, "office_id"=>51}

spec.add_dependency("activesupport") should be enough

Currently I have to specify :default_strategy => :build for every factory.

I have to redefine associations in factories, even if the parent factory defines them already.

Example:

Factory.define :product do |p|
  st.sequence(:id) { |n| "123456ABCDE#{sprintf("%04d", 1000+n)}"}
  st.price 200
end

Error:

ActiveRecord::RecordInvalid in 'Product Testing validations before(:all)'
Validation failed: Product product_id.validates_presence_of

I'm withdrawing this issue, as after reading the source it's become obvious that:

1) after_build is run when doing a .create, and is effectively the same thing as before_create
2) before_build and before_mock are not necessary, as there is not state change (like a .save) before .after_build and .after_mock would be run.

The association section of the readme has a couple of typos in it.

Here's my fix: http://github.com/paulgillard/factory_girl/tree/readme_typo_fix

Hi,

Just sent a pull request for a small patch that keeps a list of generated objects in a cache so they can be forensically analysed on broken test runs.

I'm not sure if this is a valuable feature or not for the community, but please, review the patch ( http://github.com/leehambley/factory_girl/commit/feb72764c84fa76b31757f0c67f50f88262e3932 ) and I'd love some feedbac either way.

More info in the pull request that I sent, but that's not too important the code speaks for itself.

• Lee

We use factory_girl to populate our demo environments with representative test data (users, accounts, etc.). Often we like to

    rake db:drop
    rake db:setup

then call our custom task to use our factories.

Problem is: after a db:drop there are no tables in the database, which prevents Factory Girl from loading the factory definitions -- and prevents us from pretty much doing anything. Quick workaround was to comment out the requirement for the factory_girl gem in environment.rb -- but I'd think it might be better to stop factory_girl from loading factory definitions when the db is blank,

What do you guys think?

Not sure if this is a bug or my misunderstanding of how factory_girl works...docs and lib/factory_girl.rb suggest that factories autoloaded from:

test/factories.rb
spec/factories.rb
test/factories/*.rb
spec/factories/*.rb

Comments and code in lib/factory_girl/factory.rb show "factories" should also be autoloaded.

Should

File.join(RAILS_ROOT, 'factories')

be in lib/factory_girl.rb or am I reading this wrong?

In lib/factory_girl.rb:

if defined? Rails.configuration
  Rails.configuration.after_initialize do
    Factory.definition_file_paths = [
      File.join(RAILS_ROOT, 'test', 'factories'),
      File.join(RAILS_ROOT, 'spec', 'factories')
    ]
    Factory.find_definitions
  end  
else
  Factory.find_definitions
end

In lib/factory_girl/factory.rb

class << self
  attr_accessor :factories #:nodoc:

  # An Array of strings specifying locations that should be searched for
  # factory definitions. By default, factory_girl will attempt to require
  # "factories," "test/factories," and "spec/factories." Only the first
  # existing file will be loaded.
  attr_accessor :definition_file_paths
end

self.factories = {}
self.definition_file_paths = %w(factories test/factories spec/factories)