This package makes testing easier by providing ways to create factories for your entities/models. Inspiration came from the Factory Boy 👦 python package and Factory Girl 👧.

You can also have a look at these projects:

• typeorm-seeding
• typeorm-factories
• typeorm-factory
• factory-girl-typeorm

NPM

npm install @adrien-may/factory --save-dev

Yarn

yarn add @adrien-may/factory --dev

This section provides a quick overview of what you can achieve with this package.

To declare a factory, you have to provide:

• An adapter: ObjectAdapter, TypeormAdapter, ...
• An entity: the model you are building
• The fields to be populated (theirs default values or ways to generate them)

The adapter allows you to persist your data. If you want to save your data in a database via typeorm, you can use the TypeormAdapter . Default Adapter is ObjectAdapter and does not persist anything. You can create your own adapter to persist your data the way you want.

import { Factory } from '@adrien-may/factory';

export class UserFactory extends Factory<User> {
  entity = User;
  attrs = {
    email: '[email protected]',
    role: 'basic',
  };
  // By default, adapter is ObjectAdapter
}

export class AdminUserFactory extends Factory<User> {
  entity = User;
  attrs = {
    email: '[email protected]',
    role: 'admin',
  };
}

You can provide your own adapter to extend this library. This library provides for now ObjectAdapter (default) and TypeormAdapter . To ease testing, this library provides a TypeormFactory class.

The following example shows how to use them:

import { Factory, TypeormFactory, TypeormAdapter } from '@adrien-may/factory';

export class UserFactory extends Factory<User> {
  entity = User;
  attrs = {
    email: '[email protected]',
    role: 'basic',
  };
  adapter = TypeormAdapter();
}

// Same as:
export class TypeormUserFactory extends TypeormFactory<User> {
  entity = User;
  attrs = {
    email: '[email protected]',
    role: 'admin',
  };
}

It is fairly common for entities to have relations (manyToOne, oneToMany, oneToOne etc...) between them. In this case we create factories for all the entities and make use of SubFactory to create a link between them. SubFactories will be resolved when instances are built. Note that this is pure syntactic sugar as one could use an arrow function calling another factory.

If one user has a profile entity linked to it: we use the UserFactory as a SubFactory on the ProfileFactory

import { Factory, SubFactory } from '@adrien-may/factory';
import { UseFactory } from './user.factory.ts'; // factory naming is free of convention here, don't worry about it.

export class ProfileFactory extends Factory<Profile> {
  entity = Profile;
  attrs = {
    name: 'Handsome name',
    user: new SubFactory(UserFactory, { name: 'Override factory name' }),
  };
}

Sequences allow you to get an incremental value each time it is ran with the same factory. That way, you can use a counter to have more meaningful data.

import { Factory, Sequence } from '@adrien-may/factory';

export class UserFactory extends Factory<User> {
  entity = User;
  attrs = {
    customerId: new Sequence((nb: number) => `cust__abc__xyz__00${nb}`),
  };
}

Lazy attributes are useful when you want to generate a value based on the instance being created. They are resolved after every other attribute but BEFORE saving the entity. For any action "post save", use the PostGenerate hook.

import { Factory, LazyAttribute } from '@adrien-may/factory';

export class UserFactory extends Factory<User> {
  entity = User;
  attrs = {
    name: 'Sarah Connor',
    mail: new LazyAttribute(instance => `${instance.name.toLowerCase()}@skynet.org`),
  };
}

Lazy sequences combine the power of sequences and lazy attributes. The callback is called with an incremental number and the instance being created.

import { Factory, LazySequence } from '@adrien-may/factory';

export class UserFactory extends Factory<User> {
  entity = User;
  attrs = {
    name: 'Sarah Connor',
    mail: new LazySequence((nb, instance) => `${instance.name.toLowerCase()}.${nb}@skynet.org`),
  };
}

To perform actions after an instance has been created, you can use the PostGeneration decorator.

import { Factory, PostGeneration } from '@adrien-may/factory';

export class UserFactory extends Factory<User> {
  ...

  @PostGeneration()
  postGenerationFunction() {
    // perform an action after creation
  }

  @PostGeneration()
  async actionOnCreatedUser(user: User) {
    // do something with user
  }
}

To generate pseudo random data for our factories, we can take advantage of libraries like:

• Fakerjs
• Chancejs
• ...

import { TypeormFactory } from '@adrien-may/factory';
import Chance from 'chance';

const chance = new Chance();

export class ProfileFactory extends TypeormFactory<Profile> {
  entity = Profile;
  attrs = {
    name: () => chance.name(),
    email: () => chance.email(),
    description: () => chance.paragraph({ sentences: 5 }),
  };
}

Note: Faker/Change are not included in this library. We only use the fact that a function passed to attrs is called every time a factory is created. Thus, you can use Faker/Chancejs to generate data.

We can use our factories to create new instances of entities:

const userFactory = new UserFactory();

For typeorm factories you should either set a default factory using:

import { setDefaultFactory } from '@adrien-may/factory';
{...}
setDefaultDataSource(typeormDatasource)
{...}
const userFactory = new UserFactory();

Or set a datasource for each instances using:

const userFactory = new UserFactory(typeormDatasource);

The factory and its adapters expose some functions:

• build: to create an object (and eventually generate data / subFactories)
• create: same as make but persist object in database via ORM "save" method
• buildMany and createMany allow to create several instances in one go

const user: User = await userFactory.create();
const users: User[] = await userFactory.createMany(5);

To override factory default attributes, add them as parameter to the create function:

const user: User = await userFactory.create({ email: '[email protected]' });