Overview

Factory Boy aims to avoid slow unit tests due to usage of create/find fixtures in database, with factory_girl for example. Factory Boy can be used as factory_girl except that factories are not created in database. ActiveRecord::Base finders method is stubbed to return fixtures (plants) you have instanciate.

Now, Factory Boy 2 handle stub of Active Record (3+) queries. This means, the fixtures(plants) created with factory boy are retrieved via a AR queries(and only with AR new queries) of your models. It does not pretend to stub 100% of all queries, but the coverage can be estimated at about 80%-90% of useful queries.

Active Record is stubbed only when at least one Plant is created in a test. After each test everything is unstubbed. That means, if you have a case where a particular(complex) query is executed but not right stubbed with factory boy you can test using fixtures in databases(with factory girl or just model.create ..), skipping factory boy process.

Tested with Active Record 3.0.1 Tests are suppose to use ActiveSupport::TestCase

See some examples below. You should see unit tests to inspect tested stubbed queries!

Queries it supposes to handle

• where clauses on attributes and associations

• chained where clauses

• like sql predicate

• limit, offset

• order (with only one order clause)

• ranges (ie where(:age => (20..30)))

• IS NULL and IS NOT NULL sql predicates

The better way to see queries handled is to see all unit tests.

Queries NOT handled

• Queries with explicit sql string(find_by_sql(“…”))

• #order with more than one order clause (ie .order(name asc, age desc))

• IS and IS NOT with other operand than NULL

Ids

Each plant fixture has now an (unique) id.

Usage

Define your Plants (~ Factories if factory_girl) in test/plants.rb

Example :

Plant.define :address do |address|
  address.number = 12
  address.street = "rue de Brest"
end

Plant.define :user do |user|
 user.name="Bart"
 user.age=800
 user.addresses = [Plant(:address)]
end

Get it with :

user = Plant(:user)

Example of tests :

def test___1
  address = Plant(:address, :street => 'rue des Lilas')
  user = Plant(:user, :name => 'Joe', :addresses => [address])

  assert_equal user, User.find #OK
  assert_equal user, User.find(:first) #OK
  assert_equal user, User.find(:last) #OK
  assert_equal [user], User.where(:name => 'Joe') #OK
  assert_equal [user], User.where("name = 'Joe' and addresses.street = 'rue des Lilas'").joins(':addresses) #OK
  assert_equal [address], user.addresses.where(:street => 'rue des Lilas') #OK

end

def test___2
  2.times { Plant(:user) }
  assert_equal 2, User.find(:all).size #OK
end

You can also create a particular plant of user like that:

user = Plant(:user, :name => "Marie", :age => age)

Specification of the class of the fixture definition

Plant.define :admin, :class => User do |user|
  user.name  = "Bart"
  user.age = 800
end

Associations

Assign fixtures to association in definition of plant :

Plant.define :profile do |profile|
  profile.password = "BREIZH!"
end

Plant.define :address do |address|
  address.number = 12
  address.street = "rue de Brest"
end

Plant.define :user do |user|
  user.name  = "Bart"
  user.age = 800
  user.profile = Plant(:profile)
  user.adresses = [Plant(:address)]
end

Definitions with dependent attributes

If you want to use the value of another attribute in definition, do like that :

Plant.define :user do |user|
  user.name = "Marie"
  user.adresses = [Plant(:address, :street => "Rue de #{user.name}")]
end

Sequences

As with factory_girl you are able to use sequences, like that :

Plant.sequence :email do |n|
  "incognito#{n}@kantena.com"
end

Plant.next(:email) # => "incognito1@kantena.com"
Plant.next(:email) # => "incognito2@kantena.com"

In Development

• Stubs aggregations methods in queries(sum, count …)

Install

gem install factory_boy

Change Log

Issues

Report Bugs here , on github