Question

The design

I have a User model that belongs to a profile through a polymorphic association. The reason I chose this design can be found here. To summarize, there are many users of the application that have really different profiles.

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :profile, :dependent => :destroy, :polymorphic => true
end

---

class Artist < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_one :user, :as => :profile
end

---

class Musician < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_one :user, :as => :profile
end

After choosing this design, I’m having a hard time coming up with good tests. Using FactoryGirl and RSpec, I’m not sure how to declare the association the most efficient way.

First attempt

factories.rb

Factory.define :user do |f|
  # ... attributes on the user
  # this creates a dependency on the artist factory
  f.association :profile, :factory => :artist 
end

Factory.define :artist do |a|
  # ... attributes for the artist profile
end

user_spec.rb

it "should destroy a users profile when the user is destroyed" do
  # using the class Artist seems wrong to me, what if I change my factories?
  user = Factory(:user)
  profile = user.profile
  lambda { 
    user.destroy
  }.should change(Artist, :count).by(-1)
end

Comments / other thoughts

As mentioned in the comments in the user spec, using Artist seems brittle. What if my factories change in the future?

Maybe I should use factory_girl callbacks and define an “artist user” and “musician user”? All input is appreciated.

Answer 1

Factory_Girl callbacks would make life much easier. How about something like this?

Factory.define :user do |user|
  #attributes for user
end

Factory.define :artist do |artist|
  #attributes for artist
  artist.after_create {|a| Factory(:user, :profile => a)}
end

Factory.define :musician do |musician|
  #attributes for musician
  musician.after_create {|m| Factory(:user, :profile => m)}
end