Machinist vs FactoryGirl - pros and cons

Question

I'm working with factory_girl, but looking at the machinist gem. Could you tell me please - what are the pros and cons of migrating to machinist? Have you compared those libs?

Answer 1

Machinist was actually heavily inspired by factory_girl, but varied because machinist's author wanted a different syntax. Since then, factory_girl added different syntax layers to simulate other factory libraries (including machinist's "blueprint" syntax). In other words, both are extremely similar, just with a different default syntax. Personally, I use factory_girl.

Answer 2

Actually, Machinist has a big advantage over Factory Girl: it doesn't hit the DB for associated objects. Look here:

Machinist vs Factory Girl: Machinist win!

Still not sure about how Machinist handles this, but anyhow it could be a huge performance boost for your test base.

Answer 3

I've not used machinist before, but I can say factory_girl is quite easy to use, extend and rip out any rails-centricness it has to be used in any type of project.