FactoryGirl with belongs_to / has_many association with minimum of 1 association

Question

The issue I'm having is specific to a relationship with a belongs_to and has_many where the has_many relationship has a requirement of at least one association . This requirement is causing my Factories to fail my model level validation and not be created.

My Group model

Group < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :organizations, dependent: nullify
  # commenting out the following line will make the tests pass
  validates :organizations, presence: true
  ...
end

The Organization model

Organization < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :group
  ...
end

Organization Factory

FactoryGirl.define do
  factory :organization
    name "test organization"
  end
end

And finally the problem child: Group Factory

FactoryGirl.define do
  factory :group do
    name "test group"
    after(:create) do |group|
      create(:organization, group: group)
    end
  end
end

and in my test, I declare the factory instance:

describe "something happens with a Group" do
  let(:group) { FactoryGirl.create :group }

  it "should work" do
    ...
  end
end

The errors my tests return are varied, but generally all point to FactoryGirl being unable to create an instance of the Group factory. eg

# when a test relies on creating an instance of 'Group'
ActiveRecord::RecordInvalid:
    Validation failed: Organizations can't be blank 

The method I'm using (callback) to create my Group factory is from this Thoughtbot post https://robots.thoughtbot.com/aint-no-calla-back-girl

There are many similar posts, but all of them that I've found as well as the Thoughtbot documentation don't mention this specific use case. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

How about something like

FactoryGirl.define do
  factory :group do
    name 'test group'
    organizations { [association(:organization)] }
  end
end

The main idea is to build the needed objects before saving them. You may also try build_list if you need more.