How to set up factory in FactoryGirl with has_many association

Question

Can someone tell me if I'm just going about the setup the wrong way?

I have the following models that have has_many.through associations:

class Listing < ActiveRecord::Base   attr_accessible ...     has_many :listing_features   has_many :features, :through => :listing_features    validates_presence_of ...   ...   end   class Feature < ActiveRecord::Base   attr_accessible ...    validates_presence_of ...   validates_uniqueness_of ...    has_many :listing_features   has_many :listings, :through => :listing_features end   class ListingFeature < ActiveRecord::Base   attr_accessible :feature_id, :listing_id    belongs_to :feature     belongs_to :listing end 

I'm using Rails 3.1.rc4, FactoryGirl 2.0.2, factory_girl_rails 1.1.0, and rspec. Here is my basic rspec rspec sanity check for the :listing factory:

it "creates a valid listing from factory" do   Factory(:listing).should be_valid end 

Here is Factory(:listing)

FactoryGirl.define do   factory :listing do     headline    'headline'     home_desc   'this is the home description'     association :user, :factory => :user     association :layout, :factory => :layout     association :features, :factory => :feature   end end 

The :listing_feature and :feature factories are similarly setup.
If the association :features line is commented out, then all my tests pass.
When it is

association :features, :factory => :feature 

the error message is undefined method 'each' for #<Feature> which I thought made sense to me because because listing.features returns an array. So I changed it to

association :features, [:factory => :feature] 

and the error I get now is ArgumentError: Not registered: features Is it just not sensible to be generating factory objects this way, or what am I missing? Thanks very much for any and all input!

Answer 1

Alternatively, you can use a block and skip the association keyword. This makes it possible to build objects without saving to the database (otherwise, a has_many association will save your records to the db, even if you use the build function instead of create).

FactoryGirl.define do   factory :listing_with_features, :parent => :listing do |listing|     features { build_list :feature, 3 }   end end