justsoftwareconsulting.com

Many many posts explain how to define FactoryGirl associations. None really seem how to do the simple case: ie: a has_many relationship with more than one child. The “documentation” certainly doesn’t. Maybe a Railscast does, but if I wanted to watch TV I wouldn’t be programming, would I?

Here’s a classic example of an unanswered question. Poor Umar wants this very same answer. He gets 3 wrong answers instead.

Anyway, here goes:

• assume users, groups
• users has_many groups
• Factory for groups has the association back to the user, as follows (this is standard, BTW)

FactoryGirl definition:

Factory.define(:group) do |group|
  group.association :user
end 

Now, the key seems to be using it. One way is as follows:

@user=Factory(:user) # creates the user, user has 0 groups
[1 .. 3].each {|iii| @user.groups << Factory(:group, :user=>@user) } ## note the :user=>@user here - this is connecting the group the user, resolving Umars complaint.

So — near as I can tell, there is no automagic way to make FactoryGirl do what you’d want – ie, automatically create N child – but at least this comes close.