#158 Factories not Fixtures

Apr 20, 2009 | 12 minutes | Testing, Tools

Fixtures are external dependencies which can make tests brittle and difficult to read. In this episode I show a better alternative using factories to generate the needed records.

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There is a newer version of this episode, see the revised episode.

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          bash
        
sudo rake gems:install RAILS_ENV=test

          config/environments/test.rb
        
config.gem "thoughtbot-factory_girl", :lib => "factory_girl", :source => "http://gems.github.com"

          spec_helper.rb
        
require File.dirname(__FILE__) + "/factories"

          spec/factories.rb
        
Factory.define :user do |f|
  f.sequence(:username) { |n| "foo#{n}" }
  f.password "foobar"
  f.password_confirmation { |u| u.password }
  f.sequence(:email) { |n| "foo#{n}@example.com" }
end

Factory.define :article do |f|
  f.name "Foo"
  f.association :user
end

          user_spec.rb
        
describe User do
  it "should authenticate with matching username and password" do
    user = Factory(:user, :username => 'frank', :password => 'secret')
    User.authenticate('frank', 'secret').should == user
  end
  
  it "should not authenticate with incorrect password" do
    user = Factory(:user, :username => 'frank', :password => 'secret')
    User.authenticate('frank', 'incorrect').should be_nil
  end
end