Fixtory

Not quite fixtures, not quite factories.

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If it is a bug please open an issue on GitHub.

About

Fixtory is an alternate syntax for working with fixture data. It also allows for grouped data scenarios rather than the "all or nothing" that ActiveRecord fixtures gives you. You'll be able to write your tests with better data isolation.

Installation

Add to your Gemfile

gem 'fixtory'

In your test_helper.rb or spec_helper.rb add the following:

require 'fixtory'
require 'fixtory/methods'

Minitest

Mix the module:

class Minitest::Test
  include Fixtory::Methods
end

Rspec

# spec/support/fixtory.rb
RSpec.configure do |config|
  config.include Fixtory::Methods
end

Usage

Start by adding a new Fixtory group file to test/fixtories. For example you may add test/fixtories/sign_up.rb:

users do
  brian do
    name 'Brian'
    email 'brian@dockyard.com'
    password 'password'
  end
end

profiles do
  one do
    role 'Developer'
    user users.brian
  end
end

In any test you can access this group of data with:

data_group = fixtory(:sign_up)

You can further access the instances of the models:

data_group.users.brian
=> <User name: 'Brian'>

data_group.profiles.one
=> <Profile role: 'Developer'>

data_group.profiles.one.user
=> <User name: 'Brian'>

Fixtory is smart enough to handle assigning all of your relationships. Within the fixtory block you can access any other table at any other time, even if it has not yet been defined. The following would have worked just fine:

profiles do
  one do
    role 'Developer'
    user users.brian
  end
end

users do
  brian do
    name     'Brian'
    email    'brian@dockyard.com'
    password 'password'
  end
end

Setting inverse relationships works:

users do
  brian do
    name     'Brian'
    email    'brian@dockyard.com'
    password 'password'
    profile  profiles.one
  end
end

profiles do
  one do
    role 'Developer'
  end
end

And setting multiple relationships:

owner do
  brian do
    name 'Brian'
    dogs [dogs.boomer, dogs.wiley]
  end
end

dogs do
  boomer do
    name 'Boomer'
  end

  wiley do
    name 'Wiley'
  end
end

Fixtory Schema

The group files are broken down into two nested blocks. The outer blocks represent tables and the inner blocks represent rows.

The name you use for the tables must match a valid table name in your database.

The name you use for your rows must be unique for that table. It has no reference to the data other than acting as a lable for which to retrieve the data later.

The values you assign to in the row block must be valid database columns. With the exception of relationships. You can assign a value to the associated ActiveRecord model's association name and Fixtory will do its best to transform this into the proper foreign key to set for database insertion.