How to use factory_girl with rspec?

If you were expecting me to tell you, sorry, because I have no idea. So it was either write a post about it, in the hopes that someone more knowledgeable than I am will tell me why I’m being ignorant, or write “I hate testing” as many times as I can before jabbing a pencil… anyway, I chose the former.

I’m trying not to let my frustrations overtake this post, so I better get to the point.

Everything is setup fine. Gems are installed, libraries are required, and so on. I’ve added a spec/factories directory, where I’m keeping all of my factories. A factory might look something like this, for example:

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Factory.define(:user) do |f|
  f.name "Ryan Heath"
  f.email "ryan@rpheath.com"
end

Before your tests are run, all of the factories are loaded into the test database for use within your tests. Here’s how to make use of the factories in your tests (using rspec as the guinea pig):

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describe Whatever do
  before(:each) do
    @user = Factory.build(:user)  # returns an unsaved object
    @user = Factory.create(:user) # returns a saved object
    @user = Factory(:user)        # shortcut for Factory.create()
  end
  
  it "should be a dumb test to show usage" do
    @user.name.should == "Ryan Heath"
    @user.email.should == "ryan@rpheath.com"
  end
end

So when you want an unsaved object, no problem, just use Factory.build() and you get an object that has a name of “Ryan Heath” and an email of “ryan@rpheath.com”. If you want that same object, but want it to be a saved instance, use either Factory.create() or Factory().

So far things seem to make sense. Nice organization for your factories and a nice easy way to generate/save them. Except what about validations? If all of the factories in spec/factories/*.rb are loaded into the database before my tests are run, when I do Factory(:user) and it tries to create another user with the same email that’s already in the database, what do you think happens? You guessed it, validations fail.

Now to me, it seems like Factory(:user) should first return the user from the DB if there is one, then create it if not. But that could be due to my sheer ignorance of how to really make use of factory_girl.

The reason why I threw rspec in the mix is because it sometimes seems like rspec isn’t clearing the database when it should be. For instance, between unit and functional tests (er, specs).

So, internet, what am I missing, here? Questions…

1. Am I correct in using before(:each) { @user = Factory(:user) }?
2. If so, why are my specs blowing up because of failed validations? (yes, I have config.use_transactional_fixtures set to true)
3. How can I get the user out of the database? Is there a Factory.load(:user) or the like? (that would pretty much solve my problems)
4. Do I really have to call a “clear_database!” method in a before(:all) block at the top of each spec?
5. Where can I see excellent factory_girl/rspec usage on a rather large project?

Don’t let me down. The winner gets the satisfaction of knowing that he or she probably saved a poor, defenseless MBP screen.