Gem: Factory Girl

intro

• a library for setting up Ruby objects as test data.
• factory_girl is a fixtures replacement with a straightforward definition syntax
• build strategies (saved objs, unsaved objs, attribute hashes, and stubbed objs)
• multiple factories, transient, lazy attributes, trait, inheritance
• sequences, aliases, associations, callbacks, etc...

config in rails

• add factory_girl_rails gem in development and test env
• require 'factory_girl_rails' and 'support/factory_girl' to 'spec_helper'.

lazy attributes

• 'normal' attributes are evaluated when the factory is defined.
• 'lazy' attributes are evaluated when the instance is initialised.
• tips: provide static values as 'normal' attributes, like name, description, etc.
• tips: provide associations and dynamically created values as 'lazy' attrs, e.g. Time.
• tips: 'lazy' attributes can work with 'transient' attributes.

play in rails console

1. add factory_girl_rails gem in development and test env.
2. rails console test --sandbox # go in console test env sandbox mode.
3. include FactoryGirl::Syntax::Methods # call methods without FactoryGirl.
4. user = build(:user) # initialize user instance from user factory.

check validation

1. FactoryGirl.factories get all 'FactoryGirl::Factory' instances
2. FactoryGirl.factories.each { |f| puts f.name } # show all factory names
3. target_factories = FactoryGirl.factories.select { |f| f.name =~ /^user_/ }
4. FactoryGirl.lint target_factories; # FactoryGirl.lint check all factories

Resources:

• Github: factory_girl, factory_girl_rails
• https://github.com/thoughtbot/factory_girl
• http://www.rubydoc.info/gems/factory_girl *
• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/factory-girl
• https://ruby-china.org/topics/3777
• https://ruby-china.org/topics/22003
• http://code.tutsplus.com/articles/factory-girl-101--cms-25087
• http://code.tutsplus.com/articles/factory-girl-201--cms-25171
• http://arjanvandergaag.nl/blog/factory_girl_tips.html