Rails batch object creation for fixture?

Question

I have a big list of record (something like 20, could be more) with a has_many :through relations, which is a bit complicate and it looks ugly on yml. Factory_girl doesn't seems to give me the simplistic ability to just create the fixture with a AR based script (it's a lot shorter that way) any good recommendation on what I could do?

Answer 1

You could open up your model again in your factories file and add a method to create the test records. Something like:

class User 
  after_create :create_records_for_testing
  def create_records_for_testing
    # code to create records
  end
end

Of course that could cause confusion down the road because the model you're testing doesn't behave the same as the model you're using in your app. Maybe there's a better way?

Answer 2

Don't monkey patch! Use Factory Girl! (she's sweet):

Factory.define(:user) do |t|
   t.factory { |a| a.assocation(:factory) }
end

Factory.define(:factory) do |t|
  t.name  "Test Factory"
end

In our specs do this:

before(:each) do 
  @factory = Factory(:factory)
  20.times do
    Factory(:user, :factory => @factory)
  end
end