factory_boy is a fixtures replacement based on thoughtbot's factory_girl.

Its features include:

• Straightforward syntax
• Support for multiple build strategies (saved/unsaved instances, attribute dicts, stubbed objects)
• Powerful helpers for common cases (sequences, sub-factories, reverse dependencies, circular factories, ...)
• Multiple factories per class support, including inheritance
• Support for various ORMs (currently Django, Mogo, SQLAlchemy)

• Documentation: http://factoryboy.readthedocs.org/
• Official repository: https://github.com/rbarrois/factory_boy
• Package: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/factory_boy/

factory_boy supports Python 2.6, 2.7, 3.2 and 3.3, as well as PyPy; it requires only the standard Python library.

PyPI: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/factory_boy/

$ pip install factory_boy

Source: https://github.com/rbarrois/factory_boy/

$ git clone git://github.com/rbarrois/factory_boy/
$ python setup.py install

Factories declare a set of attributes used to instantiate an object. The class of the object must be defined in the FACTORY_FOR attribute:

import factory
from . import models

class UserFactory(factory.Factory):
    FACTORY_FOR = models.User

    first_name = 'John'
    last_name = 'Doe'
    admin = False

# Another, different, factory for the same object
class AdminFactory(factory.Factory):
    FACTORY_FOR = models.User

    first_name = 'Admin'
    last_name = 'User'
    admin = True

factory_boy supports several different build strategies: build, create, attributes and stub:

# Returns a User instance that's not saved
user = UserFactory.build()

# Returns a saved User instance
user = UserFactory.create()

# Returns a dict of attributes that can be used to build a User instance
attributes = UserFactory.attributes()

You can use the Factory class as a shortcut for the default build strategy:

# Same as UserFactory.create()
user = UserFactory()

No matter which strategy is used, it's possible to override the defined attributes by passing keyword arguments:

# Build a User instance and override first_name
>>> user = UserFactory.build(first_name='Joe')
>>> user.first_name
"Joe"

Most factory attributes can be added using static values that are evaluated when the factory is defined, but some attributes (such as fields whose value is computed from other elements) will need values assigned each time an instance is generated.

These "lazy" attributes can be added as follows:

class UserFactory(factory.Factory):
    FACTORY_FOR = models.User
    first_name = 'Joe'
    last_name = 'Blow'
    email = factory.LazyAttribute(lambda a: '{0}.{1}@example.com'.format(a.first_name, a.last_name).lower())

>>> UserFactory().email
"[email protected]"

Unique values in a specific format (for example, e-mail addresses) can be generated using sequences. Sequences are defined by using Sequence or the decorator sequence:

class UserFactory(factory.Factory):
    FACTORY_FOR = models.User
    email = factory.Sequence(lambda n: 'person{0}@example.com'.format(n))

>>> UserFactory().email
'[email protected]'
>>> UserFactory().email
'[email protected]'

Some objects have a complex field, that should itself be defined from a dedicated factories. This is handled by the SubFactory helper:

class PostFactory(factory.Factory):
    FACTORY_FOR = models.Post
    author = factory.SubFactory(UserFactory)

The associated object's strategy will be used:

# Builds and saves a User and a Post
>>> post = PostFactory()
>>> post.id is None  # Post has been 'saved'
False
>>> post.author.id is None  # post.author has been saved
False

# Builds but does not save a User, and then builds but does not save a Post
>>> post = PostFactory.build()
>>> post.id is None
True
>>> post.author.id is None
True

Debugging factory_boy can be rather complex due to the long chains of calls. Detailed logging is available through the factory logger:

import logging
logger = logging.getLogger('factory')
logger.addHandler(logging.StreamHandler())
logger.setLevel(logging.DEBUG)

This will yield messages similar to those (artificial indentation):

BaseFactory: Preparing tests.test_using.TestModel2Factory(extra={})
  LazyStub: Computing values for tests.test_using.TestModel2Factory(two=<OrderedDeclarationWrapper for <factory.declarations.SubFactory object at 0x1e15610>>)
    SubFactory: Instantiating tests.test_using.TestModelFactory(__containers=(<LazyStub for tests.test_using.TestModel2Factory>,), one=4), create=True
    BaseFactory: Preparing tests.test_using.TestModelFactory(extra={'__containers': (<LazyStub for tests.test_using.TestModel2Factory>,), 'one': 4})
      LazyStub: Computing values for tests.test_using.TestModelFactory(one=4)
      LazyStub: Computed values, got tests.test_using.TestModelFactory(one=4)
    BaseFactory: Generating tests.test_using.TestModelFactory(one=4)
  LazyStub: Computed values, got tests.test_using.TestModel2Factory(two=<tests.test_using.TestModel object at 0x1e15410>)
BaseFactory: Generating tests.test_using.TestModel2Factory(two=<tests.test_using.TestModel object at 0x1e15410>)

factory_boy has specific support for a few ORMs, through specific ~factory.Factory subclasses:

• Django, with ~factory.django.DjangoModelFactory
• Mogo, with ~factory.mogo.MogoFactory
• SQLAlchemy, with ~factory.alchemy.SQLAlchemyModelFactory

factory_boy is distributed under the MIT License.

Issues should be opened through GitHub Issues; whenever possible, a pull request should be included.

All pull request should pass the test suite, which can be launched simply with:

$ python setup.py test

In order to test coverage, please use:

$ pip install coverage
$ coverage erase; coverage run --branch setup.py test; coverage report

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