yii-factory-girl

yii-factory-girl is a fixtures replacement with a straightforward definition syntax for Yii 1.1, inspired by though_bot's factory_girl for Ruby and kengos' FactoryGirl.

It was created in attempt to address the following limitations of kengos' FactoryGirlPHP:

• Bypass foreign key constrains just like Yii CDbFixtureManager
• Be a native Yii extension
• Allow different strategies to store fixtures - yml, json // I actually never felt any need to do that

Install

yii-factory-girl is installed most easily via Composer. Use the following command to install the latest 1.x.x version. Remove the --dev flag if you plan to run tests on environment where require-dev composer packages are not installed.

php composer.phar require --dev --prefer-dist ddinchev/yii-factory-girl:~1.0.0

Usage

Make sure you have separate database for running unit tests. As with fixtures, any records in a table you are creating factories for, will be truncated first!

1. add the component to your test config (protected\config\test.php). The YiiFactoryGirl\Factory component has more attributes than the listed below. They are well documented in the class itself.

return array(
    // ...
    'components' => array(
        // ...
        'factorygirl' => array(
            'class' => 'YiiFactoryGirl\Factory',
            // the following properties have the corresponding default values,
            // if they don't work out for you, feel free to change them
            // 'basePath' => 'protected/tests/factories',
            // 'factoryFileSuffix' => Factory, // so it would expect $basePath/UsersFactory.php for Users class factory
        )
    )
);

2. optionally create predefined factory data files under protected\tests\factories (configurable). They use the following file format:

// The following is a factory config of Users model.
// protected/tests/factories/UsersFactory.php
// FileName UsersFactory.php
return array(
  'attributes' => array(
    'username' => 'Average Joe', // $user->username = 'test user'
    'type' => Users::TYPE_NORMAL_USER, // $user->type = Users::TYPE_NORMAL_USER
  ),
  'admin' => array(
    'name' => 'The Boss',
    'type' => Users::TYPE_ADMIN_USER
  )
);

3. now, if you call in your tests Yii::app()->factorygirl->create('Users'); this would create a Users record.

class FactoryGirlIntegrationTest extends CTestCase
{

    public function testIntegration() {
        // this will create a model without actually inserting it in the db, so no primary key / id
        $unsaved = Yii::app()->factorygirl->build('Users');
        $this->assertTrue($unsaved->id == null);
    
        // this on the other hand will create the user!
        $user = Yii::app()->factorygirl->create('Users');
        $this->assertFalse($user->id == null);
        $this->assertInstanceOf('Users', $user);
        $this->assertEquals('Average Joe', $user->username);
        
        $admin = Yii::app()->factorygirl->create('Users', array(), 'admin');
        $this->assertEquals(Users::TYPE_ADMIN_USER, $user->type);
        
        $demonstrateOverwrites = Yii::app()->factorygirl->create('Users', array('type' => Users::TYPE_ADMIN_USER));
        $this->assertEquals(Users::TYPE_ADMIN_USER, $user->type);
        $this->assertEquals('Average Joe', $demonstrateOverwrites->username);
        
        // you can even also do this, even we don't have VehiclesFactory.php
        $vehicle = Yii::app()->factorygirl->create('Vehicles', array(
            'make' => 'Honda',
            'model' => 'Accord',
            'user_id' => Yii::app()->factorygirl->create('Users')->id
        ));
        $this->assertInstanceOf('Vehicles', $vehicle);
    }

}

In the above last example, if you haven't defined VehiclesFactory.php file, you can create factories just the same. All that YiiFactoryGirl\Factory expects is that a class named Vehicles exists (or whatever you are trying to create) and you won't benefit from having predefined aliases/attributes which in many cases is just fine!

But there is one unpleasant small thing that you won't be able to use IDE auto-completion on your model created with Yii::app()->factorygirl->create(). First thing you can do is define a shortcut function in your tests bootstrap:

/**
 * @return YiiFactoryGirl\Factory
 */
function fg() {
    return Yii::app()->factorygirl;
}

Now you can create new models with just $user = fg()->create('Users');. Now your IDE should know that $user is CActiveRecord, even if not the specific Users one. Of course, you could create a shortcut for creation of specific models. You could create a protected\tests\factories\shortcuts.php file and require it in your bootstrap.php with a definition like this:

class UsersFactory {
    /**
     * @return Users
     */
    public static function create(array $attributes = array(), $alias = null) {
        return Yii::app()->factorygirl->create('Users', $attributes, $alias); 
    }
    
    /**
     * @return Users
     */
    public static function build(array $attributes = array(), $alias = null) {
        return Yii::app()->factorygirl->build('Users', $attributes, $alias); 
    }
}

From now on you will be able to create user factories in your tests just calling $testuser = UsersFactory::create(['username' => 'testname']); and your IDE will know that $testuser is instance of Users! This of course is some repetetive work, so it makes sense for models used a lot through the application.

FactoryGirl Sequence

This has been "borrowed" directly from kengos' FactoryGirl.

<?php

return array(
  'attributes' => array(
    'name' => 'bar_{{sequence}}',
  ),
);
?>

Yii::app()->factorygirl->build('Foo')->name // -> bar_0
Yii::app()->factorygirl->build('Foo')->name // -> bar_1

Contributing

Opening issues for feature requests/bug reports is an option but proposing a solution is much more helpful!

1. Fork it
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Added some feature / fixed some bug.')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create new Pull Request