Foxy Fixtures making inconsistent ids

Rails
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

On Feb 17, 1:00 pm, markds75 [email protected] wrote:

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]
class SurveyQuestions < ActiveRecord::Base
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 J.

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.

###_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)

5

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

6

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