factory girl cheet sheet

cheat_sheet.rb

Factory girl is an object factory library to be used with your tests.

Installation:
$ [sudo] gem install factory_girl

or with Rails >2.1 dependency management, add to environment.rb

config.gem "factory_girl", :lib => false

Then add:
  require 'factory_girl'
to your test_helper.rb or spec_helper.rb

Defining factories:
# This will guess the User class
Factory.define :user do |u|
  u.first_name 'John'
  u.last_name  'Doe'
  u.admin false
end

# This will use the User class (Admin would have been guessed)
Factory.define :admin, :class => User do |u|
  u.first_name 'Admin'
  u.last_name  'User'
  u.admin true
end

# This will copy the attributes from the parent factory to the current one with
an ability to override them.
Factory.define :super_user, :parent => :user do |u|
  u.super_user true
end

Lazy Attributes:
Factory.define :user do |u|
  # ...
  u.activation_code { User.generate_activation_code }
end

Dependent Attributes:
Factory.define :user do |u|
  u.first_name 'Joe'
  u.last_name  'Blow'
  u.email {|a| "#{a.first_name}.#{a.last_name}@example.com".downcase }
end

Associations:
Factory.define :post do |p|
  # ...
  p.author {|author| author.association(:user, :last_name => 'Writely') }
end

# Or in short form
Factory.define :post do |p|
  p.association :author, :factory => :user
end

Sequences:
# Defines a new sequence
Factory.sequence :email do |n|
  "person#{n}@example.com" 
end

#Uses the sequence
Factory.next :email
# => "person1@example.com"

# can also be defined inline:
Factory.define :user do |u|
  u.sequence(:email) { |n| "persion#{n}@example.com" }
end

Callbacks:
# Run a callback after building the record. Handy for Devise.
Factory.define :user do |u|
  u.after_build { |u| u.skip_confirmation! }
end

Using factories:
# Build and save a User instance
Factory(:user)

# Build a User instance and override the first_name property
Factory.build(:user, :first_name => 'Joe')

# Return an attributes Hash that can be used to build a User instance
attrs = Factory.attributes_for(:user)