Factory Girl Newbie: Calling (not creating) an existing factory as an association

Question

I have some factorygirl factories that involve associations to other factories. For example:

FactoryGirl.define do
  factory :user do |f|
    f.sequence(:email) { |n| "user#{n}@example.com" }
    f.password "foobar"
    f.password_confirmation { |u| u.password }
    f.role_id 2
    f.association :role, :factory => :role
  end
end

The problem is that if I call Factory(:user) twice, I get a duplication error (there's a uniqueness constraint on the role.name column)

So the question is: how do I specify that the above should create the :role factory if it doesn't already exist, but use the existing one if it doesn't?

Answer 1

Why dont you use a sequence on Factory role name. For example define sequence for role name like in

FactoryGirl.sequence :role_name do |n|
    "role#{n}"
  end

and define Factory role like in

  factory.role do |role|
     f.name Factory.next :role_name
  end

By doing this, each time a new role will be created but with a different role_name. You could pass the role to Factory.build by creating the role in each test. But I find that cumbersome.