Object-factory¶ ↑

A ruby gem designed to make it simple to create test objects within your test framework, so you don’t need to use nasty fixtures.

If you don’t use the a_saved method then it should work with any type of model, if you do use a_saved then it will work with any model that has a save method (that returns false on failure - so ActiveRecord and DataMapper should be OK).

gem install object-factory

See the wiki page at github.com/brightbox/object-factory/wikis/home for the latest docs. In particular, wiki.github.com/brightbox/object-factory/usage-with-rails-rspec-and-cucumber is a pretty good example of how to get started.

However, it works something like this:

when_creating_a Person, :auto_generate => :employee_code

@person = a Person, :first_name => 'John', :last_name => 'Smith'
puts @person.employee_code # will show a unique auto-generated value

And your options are:

• :auto_generate => [:field1, :field2]: generates a unique string value for the given field name or array of field names

• :auto_confirm => :password: generates a unique string value for the given field name or array of field names and also sets field_name_confirmation to the same value

• :generate_email_address => 📧 generates a randomised email address for the given field name or array of field names

• :generate_ip_address => :ip: generates a randomised ip address for the given field name or array of field names

• :set => { :field3 => ‘value3’, :field4 => ‘value4’ }: sets the given fields to the supplied static values

• :generate => { :field5 => lambda { Date.today } }: sets the given fields to the supplied dynamic values

If you want to generate a unique value yourself, you can use Object::Factory’s next_number call (which has a simple shortcut a_number).

:generate => { :field => "unique-value-#{a_number}" }

(currently only for ActiveRecord)

If you register your (ActiveRecord) class with the clean_up option, then the factory can ensure that all instances are deleted. This is useful if you cannot use transactional_fixtures (for example using Watir or Culerity in your test suite).

Add a clean_up parameter when registering your classes:

when_creating_a Person, :auto_generate => [:first_name, :last_name], :clean_up => true

Then in your “after” section call:

Object.factory.clean_up

This will call delete_all on any registered classes (hence it is currently ActiveRecord only).

To use this with rails, stick the following in your environment.rb:

config.gem "object-factory"

Also check out wiki.github.com/brightbox/object-factory/usage-with-rails-rspec-and-cucumber for more information on integrating Object-Factory with your application.

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