#158 Factories not Fixtures (revised)

I still feel like testing is such a drag, How do I believe?

Thanks for this episode, Ryan!

I have only one question: using two (or more) should in one it is o'key or it's just an example?

Take a look at faker for generating unique object data.

I love using factories, but for some reason I got frustrated with the factory_girl syntax on a recent project and ended up justing creating my own factories.rb file in the support/ directory that didn't use an external gem.

It is surprisingly easy to do in plain old active record with a familiar syntax, so now I'm not sure it even warrants a separate gem. May just be personal preference though.

def create_user options={}
  User.create!(user_attributes.merge(options))
end

def user_attributes
  {:email => "user#{user_count}@example.com"}
end

def user_count
  @user_count = @user_count.nil? ? 0 : @user_count += 1
end

Thanks for the great episode, but erg... I'm a little frustrated with the RailsCasts site.

I wrote a comment then cmd + clicked "Show Notes" to try to reference something in the show notes thinking it would pop open that page in a new browser window. Unfortunately, it didn't. When I tried to click back to get back to this page, I had lost my written-but-not-submitted comment. Can you either 1) make it so you can cmd + click "Show Notes" and open a new browser window with the show notes page or 2) make is so you can click back to return to this form without loosing the form data?

Here is my comment again, though I'm going to paraphrase this time:

I believe you can use Factory instead of FactoryGirl in factories.rb and your spec files. For example:

FactoryGirl.define :user { |f| f.name "Matt" }
Factory.create :user { |f| f.name "Matt" }

FactoryGirl.create(:user)
Factory.create(:user)

I prefer not to include Factory::Syntax::Methods in my spec_helper.rb, as I like to explicitly show that I'm using a factory to build/create objects. Just using create or build might be misinterpreted as ActiveRecord calls.

Quick question, I'm currently writing integration tests for a Sorcery powered Rails 3.1 app. I'm having some issues when trying to fill in the login form. This is how my test is set up:

user = create(:user)
visit login_path
fill_in 'username', :with => user.username
fill_in 'password', :with => user.password
click_button 'Log In'
find_link(user.username).visible?

That current test setup doesn't work; however, if I do:

fill_in 'password', :with => 'foobar'

It does work. Just wondering why this isn't working for me. I assume it has something to do with encrypting the password during setup or something.

Here's my factory if anyone is interested:

sequence(:username) { |n| "foo#{n}" }
password 'foobar'
email { "#{username}@example.com" }

What about doing stubs and mock objects for request specs? I know it's possible in FactoryGirl but I never quite got the hang of it

Hello,

Just a remark on the screencast.

Apparently, you need to use
config.include FactoryGirl::Syntax::Methods
rahter than
config.include Factory::Syntax::Methods

I want to use the factories.rb file exclusively. However, when I run rails generate model User ... I get a spec/factories/user.rb file. How can I configure it so that this does not happen?

Thank you and keep up the great work you're doing with this site.

I'd like to be able to create two objects, A and B, and relate them both to Object C in my factories so I can dry up my code. How can I do that using factory girl?

I'm running into scenarios where Object A is related to one instance of Object C, and Object B is related to another instance of Object C, when I'd like them to both be relating to the same instance of Object C.

Thanks for this episode. Ryan's statement about not separating test code and test data makes sense. How about shared factories across tests? Is that a bad idea?

This episode has been updated to Rails 5 as a blog post Factories in Rails 5