Comments on: Factory Girl and has_many / has_many :through associations

By: Umuro

Umuro — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 15:21:00 +0000

You are trying to write complicated factories? Maybe you need to add
helper methods to your factories to keep it clean. Here is how:
http://conceptspace.wikidot.com/blog:39

This allows you to define complicated belongs_to and has_many
scenarios neatly. For example:

Factory.define :child do |f|

class << f
#do whatever you can do in a normal class definition
def default_parent
@default_parent ||= Factory(:parent)
end
end

f.sequence(:name) {|n| "Child#{n}"}
f.parent_id { f.default_parent.id }
end

By: William T

William T — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 03:36:54 +0000

Nice tip. I respect you.

By: Umur

Umur — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 11:17:24 +0000

I simply tried the suggestion making
class User
has_many :posts
class Post
belongs_to :user

In the code above all groups end up with “user_id = nil”. Actually the factory creates the posts and the users. And the result is many unrelated posts and users.

Can we consider it a bug or missing feature of factory girl?
The one to many definition does not work:
user.groups {|groups| [groups.association(:group)]}

By: dante regis

dante regis — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 23:57:00 +0000

I’m sure you couldn’t, and that’s not your fault. It’s not there. I found it on a blog, but since I posted a few days after reading it, I could not remember the source, for what I am sorry.

By: dante regis

dante regis — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 23:53:39 +0000

can you tell us how your relationships are defined in the models so we can help you better?

By: Umur

Umur — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 02:23:37 +0000

I try your suggestion but…
All groups end up with “user_id = nil”
Using factory_girl 1.2.0

By: andy white

andy white — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 15:16:48 +0000

If it wasn’t for excellent people like you – who find an answer to an annoying problem like this and then publish it to the world – people like me would spend hours hitting our heads against a brick wall. I salute you!

Just started using Factory Girl and it looks really useful but, unless I’m being thick, I couldn’t find this in the rdoc.