Fixtures aren't fun. Machinist is.
Machinist lets you construct test data on the fly, but instead of doing this:
describe Comment do
before do
@user = User.create!(:name => "Test User")
@post = Post.create!(:title => "Test Post", :author => @user, :body => "Lorem ipsum...")
@comment = Comment.create!(
:post => @post, :author_name => "Test Commenter", :author_email => "[email protected]",
:spam => true
)
end
it "should not include comments marked as spam in the without_spam named scope" do
Comment.without_spam.should_not include(@comment)
end
end
you can just do this:
describe Comment do
before do
@comment = Comment.make(:spam => true)
end
it "should not include comments marked as spam in the without_spam named scope" do
Comment.without_spam.should_not include(@comment)
end
end
Machinist generates data for the fields you don't care about, and constructs any necessary associated objects.
You tell Machinist how to do this with blueprints:
require 'faker'
Sham.name { Faker::Name.name }
Sham.email { Faker::Internet.email }
Sham.title { Faker::Lorem.sentence }
Sham.body { Faker::Lorem.paragraph }
User.blueprint do
name { Sham.name }
end
Post.blueprint do
title { Sham.title }
author { User.make }
body { Sham.body }
end
Comment.blueprint do
post
author_name { Sham.name }
author_email { Sham.email }
body { Sham.body }
end
Install the plugin:
./script/plugin install git://github.com/notahat/machinist.git
Create a blueprints.rb in your test (or spec) directory, and require it in your test_helper.rb (or spec_helper.rb):
require File.expand_path(File.dirname(__FILE__) + "/blueprints")
Set Sham to reset before each test. In the class Test::Unit::TestCase block in your test_helper.rb, add:
setup { Sham.reset }
or, if you're on RSpec, in the Spec::Runner.configure block in your spec_helper.rb, add:
config.before(:each) { Sham.reset }
Sham lets you generate random but repeatable unique attributes values.
For example, you could define a way to generate random names as:
Sham.name { (1..10).map { ('a'..'z').to_a.rand } }
Then, to generate a name, call:
Sham.name
So why not just define a method? Sham ensures two things for you:
- You get the same sequence of values each time your test is run
- You don't get any duplicate values
Sham works very well with the excellent Faker gem by Benjamin Curtis. Using this, a much nicer way to generate names is:
Sham.name { Faker::Name.name }
Sham also supports generating numbered sequences if you prefer.
Sham.name {|index| "Name #{index}" }
If you want to allow duplicate values for a sham, you can pass the :unique option:
Sham.coin_toss(:unique => false) { rand(2) == 0 ? 'heads' : 'tails' }
You can define a bunch of sham methods in one hit like this:
Sham.define do
name { Faker::Name.name }
email_address { Faker::Internet.email }
end
A blueprint describes how to build a generic object for an ActiveRecord model. The idea is that you let the blueprint take care of constructing all the objects and attributes that you don't care about in your test, leaving you to focus on the just the things that you're testing.
A simple blueprint might look like this:
Comment.blueprint do
body "A comment!"
end
Once that's defined, you can construct a comment from this blueprint with:
Comment.make
Machinist calls save! on your ActiveRecord model to create the comment, so it will throw an exception if the blueprint doesn't pass your validations. It also calls reload after the save!.
You can override values defined in the blueprint by passing parameters to make:
Comment.make(:body => "A different comment!")
Rather than providing a constant value for an attribute, you can use Sham to generate a value for each new object:
Sham.body { Faker::Lorem.paragraph }
Comment.blueprint do
body { Sham.body }
end
Notice the curly braces around Sham.body. If you call Comment.make with your own body attribute, this block will not be executed.
You can use this same syntax to generate associated objects:
Comment.blueprint do
post { Post.make }
end
If the associated model has the same name as the field, you can abbreviate this to:
Comment.blueprint do
post
end
You can refer to already assigned attributes when constructing a new attribute:
Comment.blueprint do
post
body { "Comment on " + post.name }
end
You can also override associated objects when calling make:
post = Post.make
3.times { Comment.make(:post => post) }
It's common to need to construct an object with particular attributes, or a particular object graph, in a number of tests. The best way to abstract out the construction is to put something like this in your blueprints.rb:
class Post
def self.make_with_comments(attributes = {})
Post.make(attributes) do |post|
3.times { Comment.make(:post => post) }
end
end
end
Note that make can take a block, into which it will pass the newly constructed object.
If you want to generate an object graph without saving to the database, use make_unsaved:
Comment.make_unsaved
This will generate both the Comment and the associated Post without saving either.
Some ActiveRecord objects have attributes that don't play nicely with machinist.
For example:
OpeningHours.blueprint do
open { Time.now }
end
This will result in Machinist attempting to run ruby's open command. To work around this use self.open instead.
OpeningHours.blueprint do
self.open { Time.now }
end
Written by Pete Yandell.
Contributors:
Thanks to Thoughtbot's Factory Girl. Machinist was written because I loved the idea behind Factory Girl, but I thought the philosophy wasn't quite right, and I hated the syntax.
Copyright (c) 2008 Peter Yandell, released under the MIT license