Generate Rails fixture skeleton using ActiveRecord

21croissants (Jean-Michel G) — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 20:34:39 GMT

In Rails 1.1.5, the basic generator generates the following code for the fixture used in database unit tests:



# Read about fixtures at http://ar.rubyonrails.org/classes/Fixtures.html

first:

  id: 1

another:

  id: 2

As ActiveRecord provides database reflexion features, we can generate a fixture file with all the columns' name prepopulated for number and text types, such as:



# Read about fixtures at http://ar.rubyonrails.org/classes/Fixtures.html

first:

  id: 1

  short_title: short_title_first

  title: title_first

This will be done by the following class:



require_gem 'activerecord'



class RailsFixturesGenerator



  def generate(class_name)

    

    # Get the "Class" object from the class name        

    model_class = Object.const_get(class_name)

    

    yaml_content =  "# Read about fixtures at http://ar.rubyonrails.org/classes/Fixtures.html\n"

    yaml_content += "first:\n"

    

    # get if first!   

    model_class.columns.each { |column|

      

      yaml_content += "  " + column.name + ": "

      

      if column.number?

        yaml_content +=  "1"

      end

      if column.text?

        # @todo /!\ max length

        yaml_content +=  column.name + "_first"

      end

      

      yaml_content += "\n"      

    }  

    

    write_fixture_file(model_class, yaml_content)

    

    yaml_content            

  end  

  

  # Write the  yaml file  in the test/fixtures folder

  def write_fixture_file(model_class, yaml_content)

    

    path = ENV['DEST'] || "#{RAILS_ROOT}/test/fixtures"

    db   = ENV['DB']   || 'test'

    

    File.open("#{path}/#{model_class.table_name}.yml", 'wb') do |file|    

      file.write yaml_content 

      file.close    

    end

  end

end

Of course, I have an unit test that I wrote before the code ;-)
This was my first "complex" method I wrote in Ruby so please bear with me. Any feedback is welcome. I want to write a Rails plugin in order to share the generators I will write.

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Generate Rails fixture skeleton using ActiveRecord