Question

I’m trying to create an object with embedded attributes for testing. This example uses a user with multiple languages but I would love a solution for the general case of creating embedded objects.

Present creation code:

def valid_attributes
  { :languages => [Language.new(language: "en-US", proficiency: "1")] }
end

user = User.create! valid_attributes

The models:

class User
  include Mongoid::Document
  field :languages
  embeds_many :languages 
  validates_presence_of :languages
  attr_accessible :languages_attributes
  accepts_nested_attributes_for :languages, :reject_if => lambda { |a| a[:language].blank? }, :allow_destroy => true
end

class Language
  include Mongoid::Document
  field :language
  field :proficiency
  key :language
  embedded_in :user
  attr_accessible :language, :proficiency 
end

These models work fine for creating objects from nested forms in Ryan Bates’ footsteps (https://github.com/ryanb/complex-form-examples). I don’t know whether that is the right way, but I assume so.

There are a few obvious solutions I can see. One is to just hardcode the input like what is generated from the forms:

{"user"=>{ "languages_attributes"=>{"0"=>{"language"=>"en-US", "proficiency"=>"1", "_destroy"=>"false", "id"=>"en-dash-us"}}}

That doesn’t seem DRY or sane in the long run, to me.

The other solution is to just cut the embedded objects and use Arrays. Mongoid is pretty good at supporting arrays but you lose the ability to write validations for each object and the code would be less reusable.

Thoughts, Stackoverflowers?

Answer 1

You should really use Fixtures, or better Factories for that. FactoryGirl is very popular
for creating factories.

In your case you will have to define the factory in spec/factories.rb like that:

FactoryGirl.define do
  factory :user do
    languages { [association(:language)] }
  end

  factory :language do
    language "en-US"
    proficiency "1"
  end
end

And than use it in your tests like that

user = FactoryGirl.create :user