Sinatra, ActiveRecord, FactoryGirl, and has_many_through associations - ruby

Question

I am building a Sinatra API. My models use ActiveRecord and have a many-to-many model relationship.
class Workout < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :workouts_exercises, dependent: :destroy
has_many :exercises, through: :workouts_exercises
end
class Exercise < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :workouts_exercises
has_many :workouts, through: :workouts_exercises
end
class WorkoutsExercises < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :workouts
belongs_to :exercises
end
I am trying to set up FactoryGirl to use these associations. Here is what I've got from reading all the docs I have found so far.
FactoryGirl.define do
factory :workout do
name 'Default Workout Factory Name'
description 'Default Workout Factory Description'
factory :workout_with_exercises do
after(:create) do |workout|
workout.exercises << FactoryGirl.create(:exercise)
end
end
end
end
FactoryGirl.define do
factory :exercise do
name 'Default Exercise Factory Name'
description 'Default Exercise Factory Description'
end
end
FactoryGirl.define do
factory :workouts_exercises do
workout
exercise
end
end
Here is my test that I would like to run
it 'returns the associated exercises' do
workout = FactoryGirl.create(:workout_with_exercises)
associated_exercises = workout.exercises
expect(associated_exercises.count).to eq(1)
end
However, when I run the specs I receive
1) Workout returns the associated exercises
Failure/Error: workout.exercises << FactoryGirl.create(:exercise)
NameError:
uninitialized constant Workout::WorkoutsExercise
The first method of debugging I tried was to pry before workout= declaration. Workout doesn't know about the exercises attribute. According to the ActiveRecord documentation, setting up a many-to-many association should provide you with the 16 #collection methods. This would mean that #exercises should return all the associated Exercise objects for the Workout object.
I can't, for the life of me, figure out whether or not it's my AR associations in the models that are to blame - or the FactoryGirl configuration I have. I've checked the SQL tables and all of the columns seem to be appropriate. I could really use some help figuring out what the issue is.
I've tried a few other FactoryGirl after_create hooks, using the shovel operator and attempting to declare the workouts_exercises association explicitly:
workout.exercises << [
create(:exercise, name: 'Bench Press', workouts_exercises: workout),
create(:exercise, name: 'Pushups', workouts_exercises: workout),
create(:exercise, name: 'DB Flys', workouts_exercises: workout)
]
Again, failure.
My third attempt was to use the FactoryGirl callback methods from ThoughtBot - ain't no calla back girl.
factory :workout_with_exercises do
after(:create) do |workout|
FactoryGirl.create(:exercise, workout: workout)
end
end
This results in
undefined method `exercise=' for #<Workout:0x007ff6250c2768>
Which makes me believe the AR associations aren't written correctly.
Thanks in advance for any help you can lend!

Answer 1

I use Sinatra, ActiveRecord, and RSpec. Just recently, I added FactoryGirl to the mix.
In your test framework's initialization point (I use RSpec, which is spec_helper.rb), you'll need to require the file that contains your model classes.
Next, do your model classes live within a module?
My model classes don't exist at the top-level, because I instead put them in a module for better organization within the project.
With this pattern, I found that I needed to explicitly define the module + class path for FactoryGirl.
The following would not work:
FactoryGirl.define do
factory :vendor do
name 'Test Vendor
end
end
But things began to work after I told FactoryGirl the full class name, like below:
FactoryGirl.define do
factory :vendor, class: MyAppName::Models::Vendor do
name 'Test Vendor
end
end