Factory Boy

Factory Boy is an library for Node.js which provides factories for objects creation. It's highly inspired by the fabulous factory_girl library for Ruby on Rails.

It comes with support for :

• associations
• lazy attributes
• defining factory initialization and creation methods

Installation

npm install factory-boy

Defining factories

Factory = require('factory-boy')
 
Factory.define 'user', class: User, ->
  @first_name = 'John'
  @last_name = 'Smith'
  @pin = (callback) -> callback(null, Math.floor(Math.random()*10000))
 
Factory.build 'user', (err, user) ->
  console.log user
 
Factory.create 'user', (err, user) ->
  console.log user

Custom intialization and creation methods

Factory Boy use initializeWith and createWith methods for building and creating factory objects :

initializeWith: (klass, attributes, callback) ->
  callback(null, new klass(attributes))
 
createWith: (klass, attributes, callback) ->
  klass.create(attributes, callback)

You can overwrite this methods on global level or per each factory :

# overwriting globally 
Factory = require('factory-boy')
 
Factory.initializeWith = (klass, attributes, callback) ->
  callback(null, new klass.build(attributes))
 
Factory.createWith = (klass, attributes, callback) ->
  new klass.build(attributes).create(callback)
 
# overwriting per factory 
Factory.define 'user', class: User, ->
  @initializeWith = (klass, attributes, callback) ->
    callback(null, klass.build(attributes))
 
  @createWith = (klass, attributes, callback) ->
    new klass.build(attributes).create(callback)

Lazy attributes

Attributes defined by functions are evaluated upon object intialization/creation. Lazy functions context are set to factory instance so it's possible to use already defined attributes.

Factory.define 'user', class: User, ->
  @first_name = 'John'
  @salt = (callback) ->
    time = new Date()
    callback(null, "#{first_name}#{time}")

Additionally lazy functions are evaluated in the defined order.

Factory.define 'user', class: User, ->
  @number1 = (callback) -> callback(null, 10)
  @number2 = (callback) -> callback(null, @number1 + 10)

Sequences

Sequences can be used for creating record with unique attributes i.e. emails. They are creating lazy attribute for given field with iterator passed as first argument.

Factory.define 'user', class: User, ->
  @sequence 'email', (n, callback) ->
    callback(null, "test#{n}example.com")

First variable in callback will be increment for each records, starting from value 1. Therefore creating user factories will return records with unique emails.

Associations

Factory.define 'user', class: User, ->
  @first_name = 'John'
  @association('profile')
 
Factory.define 'profile', class: Profile, ->
  @avatar_url = 'http://example.com/img.png'
 
Factory.create 'user', (err, user) ->
  console.log user.profile_id

When using associations you can pass field name as first parameter.

Factory.define 'user', class: User, ->
  @first_name = 'John'
  @association('user_profile_id', 'profile')
 

Also you can set values to associated factory.

Factory.define 'user', class: User, ->
  @first_name = 'John'
  @association('profile', avatar_url: 'http://example.com/img2.png')

By default Factory Boy will use id field from associated factory. This can be changed by passing factory options.

Factory.define 'user', class: User, ->
  @first_name = 'John'
  @association('profile', factory: {field: 'external_id'})

Contributing

1. Fork it
2. Install dependencies

npm install

1. Make your changes on branch and make sure all tests pass

npm test

1. Submit your pull request !