factory-girl

A library for setting up .NET objects as test data. Inspired by the original factory_girl for ruby, this implementation offers a simpler, feature-concise version for .NET that was influenced by FactoryGirl.NET and Plant.

Getting Started

Install factory-girl from Nuget

Install-Package factory-girl

Documentation

In the beginning, there was a model

Model

public class User
{
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public string Address { get; set; }
}

To get started, implement the IDefinable interface.

Factory

public class UserFactory : IDefinable
{
    public void Define()
    {
        FactoryGirl.Define<User>(() => new User
        {
            Name = "Bruce Wayne",
            Address = "Wayne Manor, Gotham City"
        });
    }
}

By implementing the interface, you can initialize all your factories in the given Type's assembly by calling the Initialize method.

FactoryGirl.Initialize(typeof(UserFactory));

Default and Named Factories

For each Type you can define two types of factories: Default or Named. You can have as many uniquely Named factories for a given type as you would like but you can only have one Default type.

Default Factory

public void DefineDefaultUser()
{
    FactoryGirl.Define<User>(() => new User
    {
        Name = "Peter Griffin",
        Address = "31 Spooner Street, Quahog, RI"
    });
}

Named Factories

private void DefineSeriousUser()
{
    FactoryGirl.Define("SeriousUser", () => new User
    {
        Name = "Sirius Black",
        Address = "12 Grimmauld Place"
    });
}

private void DefineAdminUser()
{
    FactoryGirl.Define("OldUser", () => new User
    {
        Name = "Fred Flinstone",
        Address = "301 Cobblestone Way"
    });
}

Building Test Objects

Building test objects of your models is now possible.

To build a Default User:

FactoryGirl.Build<User>();

To build a Named User:

FactoryGirl.Build<User>("SeriousUser");

You can also build a list of objects by calling the BuildList method

FactoryGirl.BuildList<User>();

If you need to clear your Factory call the ClearFactoryDefinitions method

FactoryGirl.ClearFactoryDefinitions();

Persisting Objects

To persist your object, implement the IRepository interface and use the Create and CreateList methods. It is important to remember that, like the original factory_girl, this implementation only calls Save() on the model. What Save() does is up to you.

public class User : IRepository
{
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public string Address { get; set; }

    public User Save()
    {
        // Your logic for saving the model to a Database.
        // Or calling a web service.
        // Or whatever persistence means to you!
        return this;
    }
}

Now we can call Create and CreateList on our Factory

var user = FactoryGirl.Create<User>();

// Create 5 Users
var users = FactoryGirl.CreateList<User>(5);