Foxy Fixtures making inconsistent ids

rubyonrails-talk
1

I’m trying to set up some new unit tests for classes I’m adding to a project. Since I’m on Rails 2.1, I figured I’d make use of the Foxy Fixtures to make things oh so much easier. Except that’s not the way my day has turned out.

I’ve got three classes where the parent class has a list of children, which in turn has a list of grandchildren:

parent:

id: integer

name: text

has_many :children, :order => :position

child:

id: integer

parent_id: integer

name: text

position: integer

has_many :grandchildren, :order => :position

belongs_to :parent

acts_as_list :scope => :parent

grandchild:

id: integer

child_id: integer

name: text

position: integer

belongs_to: child

acts_as_list :scope => :child

(These aren’t the real class names, I’m just using them to make my explanation a bit clearer.)

When I created my fixtures, I made several parent objects without using any erb:

parent_1:

name: Some Parent

parent_2:

name: Some Parent

This resulted in DB entries (MySQL) like this:

id name created_at updated_at

461483557 Some Parent 2009-02-17 01:13:54 2009-02-17 01:13:54

461483556 Some Parent 2009-02-17 01:13:54 2009-02-17 01:13:54

The ids were hashed from the labels of the YAML fixture as expected.

Clearly I’m going to have some massive growth in the number of entries I need for the children and grandchildren fixtures, so I wanted to use ERB to help keep things clean and simple. For the child.yml file, I wanted to have code that looks like this, but I ran into two problems:

<%

parents = [ "parent_1", "parent_2" ]

%>

<% parents.each do |parent| %>

<%= parent %>_child1:

position: 1

name: Kid One

parent: <%= parent %>

<%= parent %>_child2:

position: 2

name: Kid Two

parent: <%= parent %>

<%= parent %>_child3:

position: 3

name: Kid Three

parent: <%= parent %>

<% end %>

First, the database reports this error:

Mysql::Error: Unknown column ‘parent’ in ‘field list’: INSERT INTO children (name, parent, position) VALUES (‘Kid One’, ‘parent_1’, 1)

I did find a workaround for this problem, but I don’t like it and I’d much prefer being able to simply use the name of the parent object in the parent.yml file. Here’s the workaround I used:

parent_id: <%= parent.hash.abs %>

Which led me to a second problem in the IDs that are generated for the child objects. They’re simply sequential numbers, like this:

id parent_id name created_at updated_at

1 461483557 Kid One 2009-02-17 01:13:54 2009-02-17 01:13:54

2 461483557 Kid Two 2009-02-17 01:13:54 2009-02-17 01:13:54

3 461483557 Kid Three 2009-02-17 01:13:54 2009-02-17 01:13:54

I was expecting the id column to contain hashed values from “parent1_child1”, “parent1_child2”, “parent1_child3” and so on, but since they’re not, I can’t use my workaround when I create the fixtures in the grandchildren.yml file.

Ideally, I’d like to be able to specify the belongs_to fixture object by its label in the .yml file and not use my workaround at all. Though it does concern me that sometimes fixtures seem to use the hashed value of the label as an ID and sometimes just use a sequence unrelated to the label.

If anyone could give me some idea of where I should look for the problem, I’d really appreciate it.

Thank you,

Mark

2

it just tried it in a new rails project. foxy fixtures are working fine for me. neither of your problems occurr: - ids are hashed values. - relationships in yml-files work

here is my fixture-code:

# products.yml first:   name: first

second:   name: second

# pictures.yml one:   product: second

two:   product: first

maybe you got some other problems in your real code ( the one you posted looked quite ok).

3

Okay, well here's the real code I'm dealing with (sorry if its long). I'm adding surveys to a research project I've been working on, So I've got three migration files, one to create the surveys, one to create the survey questions, and another to create the possible survey answers.

###_create_surveys.rb:

class CreateSurveys < ActiveRecord::Migration   def self.up     create_table :surveys do |t|       t.boolean :required       t.string :title       t.datetime :go_live

      t.timestamps     end   end

  def self.down     drop_table :surveys   end end

###_create_survey_answers.rb:

class CreateSurveyQuestions < ActiveRecord::Migration   def self.up     create_table :survey_questions do |t|       t.integer :position       t.text :question       t.integer :survey_id       t.string :answer_style

      t.timestamps     end   end

  def self.down     drop_table :survey_questions   end end

###_create_survey_possible_answers:

class CreateSurveyPossibleAnswers < ActiveRecord::Migration   def self.up     create_table :survey_possible_answers do |t|       t.integer :position       t.text :answer       t.integer :survey_question_id

      t.timestamps     end   end

  def self.down     drop_table :survey_possible_answers   end end

And I've got 3 models to go with the new classes.

survey.rb:

class Survey < ActiveRecord::Base   has_many :survey_questions, :order => :position end

survey_questions.rb:

class SurveyQuestions < ActiveRecord::Base   belongs_to :survey   acts_as_list :scope => :survey

  has_many :survey_possible_answers end

survey_possible_answers.rb:

class SurveyPossibleAnswers < ActiveRecord::Base   belongs_to :survey_questions, :order => :position   acts_as_list :scope => :survey_questions end

And finally, here's the test data I was trying to use.

surveys.yml:

initial_survey:   required: true   title: Initial Survey   go_live: 2009-01-01 00:00:00

past_weekly_1:   required: false   title: Past Weekly One   go_live: 2009-02-01 00:00:00

past_weekly_2:   required: false   title: Past Weekly Two   go_live: 2009-02-01 00:00:00

future_weekly_1:   required: false   title: Future Weekly One   go_live: <%= Date.today.next.strftime( "%Y-%m-%d" ) %>

future_requred_1:   required: true   title: Future Required   go_live: <%= Date.today.next.strftime( "%Y-%m-%d" ) %>

survey_questions.yml:

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

<%     surveys = [ "initial_survey", "past_weekly_1", "past_weekly_2", "future_weekly_1", "future_requred_1" ] %>

<% surveys.each do |survey| %>

<%= survey %>_q1:   position: 1   question: My Question?   survey: <%= survey %>

<%= survey %>_q2:   position: 2   question: My Question?   survey: <%= survey %>

<%= survey %>_q3:   position: 3   question: My Question?   survey: <%= survey %>

<% end %>

survey_possible_answers.yml:

<%     surveys = [ "initial_survey", "past_weekly_1", "past_weekly_2", "future_weekly_1", "future_requred_1" ]     numQuestions = 3 %>

<% surveys.each do |survey| %>     <% for i in (1..numQuestions) %>

<%= survey %>_q<%= i %>_a1:   position: 1   answer: Some Answer   survey_question: <%= survey %>_q<%= i %>

<%= survey %>_q<%= i %>_a2:   position: 2   answer: Some Answer   survey_question: <%= survey %>_q<%= i %>

<%= survey %>_q<%= i %>_a3:   position: 3   answer: Some Answer   survey_question: <%= survey %>_q<%= i %>     <% end %> <% end %>

So .... after all that, I get errors like this when I try to run rake test:units:

ActiveRecord::StatementInvalid: Mysql::Error: Unknown column 'survey_question' in 'field list': INSERT INTO `survey_possible_answers` (`answer`, `survey_question`, `position`) VALUES ('Some Answer', 'future_requred_1_q1', 1)

4

Okay, well here's the real code I'm dealing with (sorry if its long). I'm adding surveys to a research project I've been working on, So I've got three migration files, one to create the surveys, one to create the survey questions, and another to create the possible survey answers.

[snip]

And I've got 3 models to go with the new classes.

survey.rb:

class Survey < ActiveRecord::Base has_many :survey_questions, :order => :position end

survey_questions.rb:

class SurveyQuestions < ActiveRecord::Base belongs_to :survey acts_as_list :scope => :survey

has_many :survey_possible_answers end

survey_possible_answers.rb:

class SurveyPossibleAnswers < ActiveRecord::Base belongs_to :survey_questions, :order => :position acts_as_list :scope => :survey_questions end

The problem: the belongs_to here is going to fail. In the vast majority of cases, belongs_to should have a singular name. The code here won't ever work, as you've got the DB field (survey_question_id) named correctly, and it won't match.

BTW, tiny typos like this are why I prefer to start by poking at the models in console; frequently, that will drive the first tests of the models, and if you've got a typo it will be very apparent...

--Matt Jones

5

good morning,

matt's post did fix your problems, didn't it?

should be somethign like this then (no :order needed for one :survey_question):

  class SurveyPossibleAnswers < ActiveRecord::Base     belongs_to :survey_question     acts_as_list :scope => :survey_question   end

6

Thanks Matt, that was the problem. I'll keep the console in mind next time around... it never occurred to me to try that this time.

The Survey model didn't change. The corrected models are:

survey_question.rb:

class SurveyQuestion < ActiveRecord::Base   belongs_to :survey   acts_as_list :scope => :survey

  has_many :survey_possible_answers end

survey_possible_answer.rb:

class SurveyPossibleAnswer < ActiveRecord::Base   belongs_to :survey_question   acts_as_list :scope => :survey_question end

The migrations and fixture files didn't have to change.

Mark