Question

I have a table which includes an integer type column named “sequence”, which does not allow nulls. If I try to define the factory normally, FactoryGirl thinks I’m trying to set up a sequence rather than define a column name.

factory :my_table do
    sequence 1
end

# NoMethodError: undefined method `to_sym' for 1:Fixnum

How can I set this up so that FactoryGirl recognizes it as a plain column, not a FactoryGirl sequence? What if I wanted to use an actual sequence to populate the column with unique incrementing integer values? I could see potentially having the same problem with a column named ‘trait’ or ‘association’. Incidentally, I’m using factory_girl 3.3.0 and rails 3.2.8.

Answer 1

Googling found this solution:

factory :luggage do
  add_attribute :sequence, "12345"
end

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/factory_girl/OriR9gXlMZI

If you then need to create a sequence and use it, see this cheat sheet:

Sequences:

# Defines a new sequence
Factory.sequence :email do |n|
  "person#{n}@example.com" 
end

#Uses the sequence
Factory.next :email
# => "[e-mail]"

# can also be defined inline:
Factory.define :user do |u|
  u.sequence(:email) { |n| "persion#{n}@example.com" }
end

http://cheat.errtheblog.com/s/factory_girl