How split factory_girl definitions across many files? - ruby-on-rails

Question

My factories.rb file became too big to maintain over time and I'm now trying to split it across many files in factories directory. The problem is that I don't know how to deal with dependencies.
To make a long story short, I'm trying to split my factories in following way. All sequences go to sequences.rb file and each factory definition goes to separate file like so:
factories/sequences.rb
FactoryGirl.define do
sequence :name {|n| "Name #{n}" }
sequence :email {|n| "person#{n}#example.com" }
end
factories/user.rb
FactoryGirl.define do
factory :user do
name
email
end
end
factories/post.rb
FactoryGirl.define do
factory :post do
name
content "Post Content"
user
end
end
When I run tests I get name is not defined error. I can deal with this by passing a block to each association (e.g. name, email, user and so on) mention but it seems to be ugly and not DRY.
Is there way to let factory_girl know sequence in which files should be loaded?
to deal with complex dependencies when it's not possible to fix this issue with changing load sequence of files?

Answer 1

You can simply achieve the result with generate method:
# factories/sequences.rb
FactoryGirl.define do
sequence(:email) { |n| "person#{n}#example.com" }
end
# factories/user.rb
FactoryGirl.define do
factory :user do
email { generate(:email) }
password '12345678'
end
end
Then try it:
FactoryGirl.create :user
=> #<User:0x007fa99d2ace40
id: 1,
email: "person1#example.com",
. . .>
Sequences Documentation for more details.

Answer 2

I do this in this way:
Create separate folder for shared factories. It should in same level as 'factories' folder.
factories
shared_factories
Create shared file, ex. shared_factories/sequences.rb
Import sequences.rb to every factory file.
require_relative '../shared_factories/sequences'
The full example:
https://gist.github.com/alexkojin/6a2d70f84ff91c37315d1d3edb0d8e6b

Answer 3

You can do this:
FactoryGirl.define do
factory :user do
sequence(:name) {|n| "Name #{n}" }
sequence(:email) {|n| "person#{n}#example.com" }
end
end
FactoryGirl.define do
factory :post do
content "Post Content"
user { create :user }
end
end
There are a variety of ways to structure your factory girls factories such as traits, inheritance, callbacks, etc. I just recently learned about traits and it is really wonderful:
FactoryGirl.define do
factory :user do
sequence(:name) {|n| "Name #{n}" }
sequence(:email) {|n| "person#{n}#example.com" }
end
trait :with_post do
after(:create) { |user| create :post, user: user }
end
end
FactoryGirl.define do
factory :post do
content "Post Content"
user { create :user }
end
end
# and in your specs you will do this:
let!(:blogger) { create :user, :with_post }
It is very worthwhile to invest some time reading through the entire documentation (a 30 mins read perhaps?). Thereafter, you will have much better ideas to refactor your factories.
Reference link: https://github.com/thoughtbot/factory_girl/blob/master/GETTING_STARTED.md