Factories

DB factories provide a method to populate the database with fake data. Using factories, you won’t have to run SQL queries to populate the Database in every test. Since they are reusable, you can define one factory for each table and use them across all tests. Usage example:

# Generates 100 controlled vocabularies.
# @return an array of vocabularies
$controlledVocabs = factory('chado.cv', 100)->create()

Factories should only be used for testing and development purposes.

Defining Factories

Factories live in tests/DataFactory.php. If you don’t have that file, create it. Note that this file is auto created with tripaltest init.

Example DataFactory file:

<?php

use StatonLab\TripalTestSuite\Database\Factory;

Factory::define('chado.cv', function (Faker\Generator $faker) {
        return [
                'name' => $faker->name,
                'definition' => $faker->text,
        ];
});

As shown in the example above, using Factory::define(), we can define new factories. The define method takes the following parameters:

Parameter	Type	Description	Example
$table	string	The table name preceded with the schema name if the schema is not public	chado.cv or node
$callback	callable	The function that generates the array. A Faker\Generator instance is automatically passed to the callable	see above for example
$primary_key	string	OPTIONAL The primary key for the given table. Primary keys auto discovered for CHADO tables only. If the factory wasn’t able to find the primary key, an Exception will be thrown	nid or cv_id

Checking if a Factory Exists

To determine whether a factory exists, you can use the Factory::exists($table) method:

<?php
// Import the Factory class
use StatonLab\TripalTestSuite\Database\Factory;

Factory::exists('user'); // true

// For chado tables always precede with `chado.`
Factory::exists('chado.feature'); // true

Using Factories

Once defined, factories can be used in test files directly or in database seeders. Usage:

# Create a single CV record
$cv = factory('chado.cv')->create();
echo "$cv->name\n";

# Create 100 CV records
$cvs = factory('chado.cv', 100)->create();

foreach ($cvs as $cv) {
  echo "$cv->name\n";
}

Overriding Defaults

Sometimes you need to override a column to be a static predictable value. The create() method accepts an array of values to override the faker data with. Example:

# Let's make sure the cvterm has a specific cv id
$cv = factory('chado.cv')->create();
$cv_term = factory('chado.cvterm', 100)->create([
        'cv_id' => $cv->cv_id,
])

The above example creates 100 cv terms that have the same cv_id.

Factories should only be used for testing and development purposes. This is because they are recursive and create the records linked via foreign key. They do this even if you override the default for the linked record.