QuickFactory

A lightweight, flexible factory library for Elixir that makes test data generation simple and intuitive.

Features

• 🚀 Simple Setup - Define factories with minimal boilerplate
• 🔧 Flexible Data Generation - Build structs, params, or insert directly to database
• ✅ Changeset Validation - Optional validation using your schema's changesets
• 🔄 Batch Operations - Generate multiple records at once
• 🎯 Key Transformation - Support for atom, string, and camelCase keys
• 📊 Built-in Counters - Generate unique values across test runs

Quick Start

1. Define a Factory

defmodule MyApp.UserFactory do
  use QuickFactory,
    schema: MyApp.User,
    repo: MyApp.Repo,
    changeset: :changeset

  def call(params \\ %{}) do
    %{
      name: "John Doe",
      email: "john@example.com",
      age: 25,
      first_name: "John",
      last_name: "Doe"
    }
    |> Map.merge(params)
  end
end

2. Generate Test Data

# Build a struct
user = UserFactory.build()
#=> %User{name: "John Doe", email: "john@example.com", age: 25}

# Build with custom params
user = UserFactory.build(%{name: "Jane"})
#=> %User{name: "Jane", email: "john@example.com", age: 25}

# Generate params only (great for API testing)
params = UserFactory.build_params(%{age: 30})
#=> %{name: "John Doe", email: "john@example.com", age: 30}

# Insert to database
user = UserFactory.insert!()

# Generate multiple records
users = UserFactory.insert_many!(3)

3. Key Transformations

Perfect for API testing with different key formats:

# Default: atom keys
UserFactory.build_params()
#=> %{name: "John Doe", first_name: "John", last_name: "Doe"}

# String keys
UserFactory.build_params(%{}, keys: :string)
#=> %{"name" => "John Doe", "first_name" => "John", "last_name" => "Doe"}

# CamelCase string keys (great for JSON APIs)
UserFactory.build_params(%{}, keys: :camel_string)
#=> %{"name" => "John Doe", "firstName" => "John", "lastName" => "Doe"}

Installation

Add quick_factory to your list of dependencies in mix.exs:

def deps do
  [
    {:quick_factory, "~> 0.2.0", only: :test}
  ]
end

Why QuickFactory?

• Less Magic, More Control - Explicit factory definitions that are easy to understand
• Test-Focused - Built specifically for testing scenarios
• Ecto Integration - Works seamlessly with Ecto schemas and changesets
• Lightweight - Minimal dependencies and overhead

Documentation

For full documentation, visit HexDocs.

Credits

Ideas / Code taken from:

• https://github.com/theblitzapp/factory_ex with simplifications and removals.
• https://github.com/beam-community/ex_machina/blob/main/lib/ex_machina/sequence.ex - nice sequence handling