FactoryGirl define attribute by calling method on another factory

Question

Here is an example from the FactoryGirl documentation:

FactoryGirl.define do
  factory :post do
    name "Post name"
    user
  end
end

In this example, user is invoking another factory. What I would like to do is effectively call user.id, but to set it as the definition of an attribute. Here's a stripped-down example:

**models/job.rb**
  ...
  belongs_to :assignee, :class_name => "User"
  belongs_to :user
  ...
  attr_accessible :assignee_id, :user_id
  ...
end


**factories/jobs.rb**
FactoryGirl.define do
  factory :job do
    assignee_id user.id      #what I would like to do, but triggers "undefined method 'id'" error
    user_id user.id          #user_id is an attribute of the model and is the job assignor
 end

I've tried to incorporate the part of the documentation that discusses aliases, but with no luck:

FactoryGirl.define do
  factory :user, :aliases => [:assignee] do
  ....

I feel like (hope?) I'm close here, but any insight is appreciated. Thanks.

EDIT: This code gets my specs running!

**factories/jobs.rb**

FactoryGirl.define do
  factory :job do
    before(:create) do |job|
      user = FactoryGirl.create(:user)
      job.assignee = user
      job.user  = user
    end

  association :assignee, factory: :user
  association :user, factory: :user
  sequence(:user_id) { |n| n }
  sequence(:assignee_id) { |n| n }
  ...
end

And it passes my it { should be_valid } spec, so it seems that the factory is fine, though I think I have some refactoring in the spec itself when I'm calling FactoryGirl.create.

The code above incorporates the suggestions from mguymon. Thanks!

FINAL UPDATE

After going back and re-reading Hartl's discussion on model associations, I was able to put this matter to rest. What I have above was techincally valid, but didn't actually pass the attributes in properly when i built or created jobs in my spec. Here's what I should have had:

FactoryGirl.define do
  factory :job do
    association :assignee, factory: :user
    user
  end
end

My problem also stemmed from how I was creating factories in my spec, so here's how I should have been doing it (but wasn't...sigh):

    let(:user) { create(:user) }
    before { @job = create(:job, user: @user) }

It seems that I don't explicitly have to have association :user in my factory, nor do I need the before block from above.

As an aside, I also learned that I can debug by including puts @job within an expect statement, or call @job.assignee_id to make sure that the attributes are being loaded properly. When that particular spec is run, the puts statement will output right by the F or . from the spec.

Answer 1

For the latest version of FactoryGirl, use association to map to other ActiveRecord Models:

factory :job do
  # ...
  association :assignee, factory: :user
end

This is straight from the docs.

---

From the error you posted, it is stating you are trying to get the user.id but user is not an ActiveRecord instance but a proxy from FactoryGirl. You will not get this error if you are using the association method. If you need to directly access a model, you have to manually build it first. You can do this by passing a block in your factory:

factory :job do
    assignee_id { FactoryGirl.create(:user).id }
end

It looks like you are trying to associate the same model twice, for this you can use before_create callback to create a User model and assign to user and assignee:

factory :job do

  before(:create) do |job|
      user = FactoryGirl.create(:user)
      job.assignee = user
      job.user = user
  end
end