factories-and-workers at github

Factories and Workers is a Rails plugin originally written by Nathan Herald @ myobie.com after being inspired by Dan Manges’ blog post on factories. It uses some slick metaprogramming to generate factory methods for your ActiveRecord models. Over the past few months I’ve refactored the code, added a bunch of new features, and most importantly wrote some tests!

>> factory :monkey, { :name => "George" }
=> #<FactoryBuilder:0x1a4f2a8>

>> valid_monkey_attributes
=> {:name=>"George"}

>> build_monkey
=> #<Monkey id: nil, name: "George">

>> build_monkey( :name => "Bob" )
=> #<Monkey id: nil, name: "Bob">

>> Monkey.count
=> 0

>> create_monkey
=> #<Monkey id: 1, name: "George">

>> Monkey.count
=> 1

There’s much more info in the README.

I just came across this cool tip from Tom Preston-Werner of rubyisawesome.com. Basically, if you end a mysql commandline query with \G instead of a semicolon, you’ll get a nicely formatted query that is suitable for pasting into a YAML file.

But what if you are not using mysql? We have a project with postgres. There’s probably a psql command to do something similar, but there is also a database agnostic way: Just use the rails console! :)

>> puts User.find(:all).to_yaml
---
- !ruby/object:User 
  attributes: 
    status: unverified
    salt: L52b2pxGCL
    can_invite: "0" 
    hashed_password: L50/yIQjPCBiU
    is_admin: "0" 
    id: "478674008" 
    first_name: Mickey
    last_name: Mouse
    watchlist_by_email: "0" 
    created_at: 2008-01-30 15:34:26
    email: mickey@mouse.com

		
		
	

In a previous post, I posted a monkey patch to enhance the behavior of fixtures. I converted it into a plugin format for convenience and testing purposes. I am still aiming to submit it as a patch to Rails 2.0. I’d appreciate any feedback!

svn export --username=public svn://internautdesign.com/public/plugins/friendly_fixtures vendor/plugins/friendly_fixtures

UPDATE: now available at github: http://github.com/dfl/friendly_fixtures/tree/master

from the README:

FriendlyFixtures

This plugin is a simple extension to add some cool features to the fixtures macro in Test::Unit. It is intended for Rails 2.0, but works with 1.2.3 as well.

• load dependent models, which are found by object introspection on a model’s ActiveRecord associations.
• assert that all the loaded fixtures are valid. This can be very helpful in finding bugs.

Example Usage:

class SomeTest < Test::Unit::TestCase
  fixtures :user, :dependencies => true, :validate => true
end

this replaces my earlier post about testing for valid fixtures. Rails 2.0 patch coming soon…?

UPDATE: This monkey patch has been replaced by a plugin (with tests!): friendly_fixtures.

Rathole, a fixtures plugin so sweet it’s been incorporated into edge rails, is great—but unfortunately it doesn’t support polymorphic associations. That is, until now! :)

Get the patch: here.

UPDATE: I learned that the author, John Burnette, has renamed the project to foxy fixtures. He also massaged my patch into a contribution for rails 2.0: Ticket 10183.

There is some discussion that this patch is not necessary.