First some code:
UserEntity user = New.User("bob").In(New.Company("ACME")).With(
New.PurchaseOf("ProductA")
.WithAcademicSlot(1).FilledBy(New.EnrollmentIn(101).ThatIsCanceled)
.WithPlacementSlot(1).FilledBy(New.EnrollmentIn(1)));
This code actually creates and saves (with NHibernate) about 12 or so entities. We can use code like this to set up one off sample data for tests in a way that's easy to read, understand and change. There is a decent amount of magic that goes into making this work and I wanted to talk about how I did it.
First we have a FixtureContext, which is just a hub for the DaoFactory, the current Session, and three helper classes, New, Current and Existing. New is the class responsible for the beginning of the syntax you see above. Each method on New returns a Creator. There's some magic in Creator, so here's the code:
public class Creator<T> : FixtureContextAware where T: class, new()
{
private T _creation;
protected T Creation
{
get { return _creation; }
private set
{
if (Current.Get<T>() != value)
{
Current.Push(value);
}
_creation = value;
}
}
public Creator(IFixtureContext context) : base(context)
{
Creation = new T();
}
public Creator(IFixtureContext context, T creation) : base(context)
{
Creation = creation;
}
public static implicit operator T(Creator<T> creator)
{
if (creator._creation == null) throw new Exception(
String.Format("Creation of {0} is null, it probably shouldn't be.", typeof(T)));
creator.Current.Pop<T>();
return creator._creation;
}
}
The first thing is that Creator is a subclass of FixtureContextAware, which is just a helper base class that provides access to FixtureContext's children. Next there are a few references to Current which is simply a collection of stacks of entities so that Creators can refer to other entities that are being created so they don't have to be passed around. This is better explained with an example. In the beginning example you see New.EnrollmentIn(101). An enrollment requires a User to be created, so because there is a User in this creation context, we can do this:
public CourseEnrollmentCreator(IFixtureContext context, short number) : base(context)
{
Creation.User = Current.User;
Creation.Course = Existing.Course(number);
Creation.StartDate = DateTime.Now;
Creation.EndDate = DateTime.Now.AddMonths(1);
Session.Save(Creation);
}
The next thing is that the creation itself is stored as Creation in the Creator. This can either be new'd up or can be passed in to the constructor.
The coolest part (at least in my opinion) is the implicit operator. This allows you do to do things like: UserEntity user = New.User().Foo(), where each of those methods returns a UserCreator, but at the end of all of it the Creator is implicitly cast to a UserEntity, the thing actually being created. This also serves as an excellent time to pop the entity from the Current stack.
Next we have the Existing class. This is essentially just a wrapper for your Daos/Repositories so you can fetch things that are already in your database (like Existing.Course(number) or Existing.User("bob")).
With this simple framework in place, the next step is to start writing your domain specific Creators. Here's an example:
public class PurchaseCreator : Creator<PurchasedProductEntity>
{
protected PurchaseCreator(IFixtureContext context, PurchasedProductEntity creation) : base(context, creation)
{
}
public PurchaseCreator(IFixtureContext context, string productName) : base(context)
{
Creation.Product = New.Product(productName);
// Initialize Purchase...
}
public PurchaseCreatorWithSlot WithAcademicSlot(int credits)
{
// Create and add slot...
return new PurchaseCreatorWithSlot(Context, this, slot);
}
public PurchaseCreatorWithSlot WithPlacementSlot(int credits)
{
// Create and add slot...
return new PurchaseCreatorWithSlot(Context, this, slot);
}
public PurchaseCreator WithSessions(int credits)
{
// Create and add sessions...
return this;
}
}
public class PurchaseCreatorWithSlot : PurchaseCreator
{
private readonly PurchasedCourseEnrollmentSlotEntity _slot;
public PurchaseCreatorWithSlot(IFixtureContext context, PurchasedProductEntity creation, PurchasedCourseEnrollmentSlotEntity slot) : base(context, creation)
{
_slot = slot;
}
public PurchaseCreatorWithSlot FilledBy(CourseEnrollmentEntity enrollment)
{
// Fill slot...
}
}
Then we add a PurchaseOf(string productName) method to New that will create and return a new PurchaseCreator. We can also add a PurchaseOf(ProductEntity product) and pass a New.Product("Product") in instead. You can make it as granular or magic as you want. Also, Notice that WithAcademicSlot and WithPlacementSlot return a subclass of PurchaseCreator that adds another method. Using techniques like this you can make some very verbose and context sensitive fixtures.
We also make our HibernateTests base class FixtureContextAware so that we can use nice syntax in our tests.
Here is the source for the basic framework. Let me know what you think.