Extra arguments for Factory Girl

Question

I need to pass extra arguments to factory girl to be used in a callback. Something like this (but more complex really):

Factory.define :blog do |blog|
  blog.name "Blah"

  blog.after_create do |blog|
    blog.posts += sample_posts
    blog.save!
  end
end

and then create it with something like this:

Factory.create(:blog, :sample_posts => [post1, post2])

Any ideas how to do it?

Answer 1

This is now possible without any "hacks" thanks to transient attributes (see comment on issue #49)

example:

FactoryGirl.define do
  factory :user do
    transient do
      bar_extension false
    end
    name {"foo #{' bar' if bar_extension}"}
  end
end

# Factory(:user).name = "foo"
# Factory(:user, :bar_extension => true).name = "foo bar"

For Factory Girl versions < 5.0:

FactoryGirl.define do
  factory :user do
    ignore do
      bar_extension false
    end
    name {"foo #{' bar' if bar_extension}"}
  end
end

# Factory(:user).name = "foo"
# Factory(:user, :bar_extension => true).name = "foo bar"