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", :email => "[email protected]")
@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, leaving you to only specify the fields you do care about in your tests.
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
email
end
Post.blueprint do
title
author
body
end
Comment.blueprint do
post
author_name { Sham.name }
author_email { Sham.email }
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 }
If you'd prefer, you can install Machinist as a gem:
sudo gem install notahat-machinist --source http://gems.github.com
From there, create the blueprints.rb file as described above, and make sure you require machinist and sham.
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 helper method to do this? 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 create a bunch of sham definitions in one hit like this:
Sham.define do
title { Faker::Lorem.words(5).join(' ') }
name { Faker::Name.name }
body { Faker::Lorem.paragraphs(3).join("\n\n") }
end
A blueprint describes how to generate an ActiveRecord object. The idea is that you let the blueprint take care of making up values for 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:
Post.blueprint do
title { Sham.title }
author { Sham.name }
body { Sham.body }
end
You can then construct a Post from this blueprint with:
Post.make
When you call make, Machinist calls Post.new, then runs through the attributes in your blueprint, calling the block for each attribute to generate a value. It then calls save! and reload on the Post.
You can override values defined in the blueprint by passing a hash to make:
Post.make(:title => "A Specific Title")
make doesn't call the blueprint blocks of any attributes that are passed in.
If you don't supply a block for an attribute in the blueprint, Machinist will look for a Sham definition with the same name as the attribute, so you can shorten the above blueprint to:
Post.blueprint do
title
author { Sham.name }
body
end
If you want to generate an object without saving it to the database, replace make with make_unsaved. (make_unsaved also ensures that any associated objects that need to be generated are not saved. See the section on associations below.)
You can generate an associated object like this:
Comment.blueprint do
post { Post.make }
end
Calling Comment.make will construct a Comment and its associated Post, and save both.
If you want to override the value for post when constructing the comment, you can:
post = Post.make(:title => "A particular title)
comment = Comment.make(:post => post)
Machinist will not call the blueprint block for the post attribute, so this won't generate two posts.
Machinist is smart enough to look at the association and work out what sort of object it needs to create, so you can shorten the above blueprint 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.title }
end
For has_many and has_and_belongs_to_many associations, ActiveRecord insists that the object be saved before any associated objects can be saved. That means you can't generate the associated objects from within the blueprint.
The simplest solution is to write a test helper:
def make_post_with_comments(attributes = {})
post = Post.make(attributes)
3.times { post.comments.make }
post
end
Note here that you can call make on a has_many association.
Make can take a block, into which it passes the constructed object, so the above can be written as:
def make_post_with_comments
Post.make(attributes) do |post|
3.times { post.comments.make }
end
end
The plan method behaves like make, except it returns a hash of attributes, and doesn't save the object. This is useful for passing in to controller tests:
test "should create post" do
assert_difference('Post.count') do
post :create, :post => Post.plan
end
assert_redirected_to post_path(assigns(:post))
end
plan will save any associated objects. In this example, it will create an Author, and it knows that the controller expects an author_id attribute, rather than an author attribute, and makes this translation for you.
You can also call plan on has_many associations, making it easy to test nested controllers:
test "should create comment" do
post = Post.make
assert_difference('Comment.count') do
post :create, :post_id => post.id, :comment => post.comments.plan
end
assert_redirected_to post_comment_path(post, assigns(:comment))
end
Named blueprints let you define variations on an object. For example, suppose some of your Users are administrators:
User.blueprint do
name
email
end
User.blueprint(:admin) do
name { Sham.name + " (admin)" }
admin { true }
end
Calling:
User.make(:admin)
will use the :admin blueprint.
Named blueprints call the default blueprint to set any attributes not specifically provided, so in this example the email attribute will still be generated even for an admin user.
If your object has an attribute that happens to correspond to a Ruby standard function, it won't work properly in a blueprint.
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:
- Clinton Forbes
- Jon Guymon
- Evan David Light
- Kyle Neath
- T.J. Sheehy
- Roland Swingler
- Matt Wastrodowski
- Ian White
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