When to use Factory Bot’s traits versus nested factories

by Jason Swett,

When I wrote about nested factories in Factory Bot, I got a couple of questions to the effect of “why wouldn’t you use traits for that?”

In responses to these questions, I’ll lay out my method for deciding when to use traits versus nested factories.

“Is” versus “has”

My method is pretty simple: If the factory I’m considering has something, I use a trait. If the factory is something, I use a nested factory. Let’s look at a concrete example.

“Has” example (trait)

In the following example I want to create a special kind of user record, a user that has a phone number. The user is still conceptually a regular old user. The only difference is that this user happens to have a value for its phone_number attribute.

FactoryBot.define do
  factory :user do
    username { Faker::Internet.username }
    password { Faker::Internet.password }

    trait :with_phone_number do
      phone_number { Faker::PhoneNumber.phone_number }
    end
  end
end

When I want to create a user that has a phone number, I do so by doing FactoryBot.create(:user, :with_phone_number).

“Is” example (nested factory)

In the following example I want to create a special kind of user record, a user that is a physician. Conceptually, a physician user is not just a regular old user. This type of user is different in kind. A physician user has different capabilities from a regular user and is used in different ways from a regular user.

FactoryBot.define do
  factory :user do
    username { Faker::Internet.username }
    password { Faker::Internet.password }

    factory :physician_user do
      role { 'physician' }
    end
  end
end

When I want to create a physician user, I do so by doing FactoryBot.create(:physician_user). Note the contrast between this and FactoryBot.create(:user, :with_phone_number).

Takeaway

When deciding whether to use a trait or a nested factory, consider whether the record has something or if it is something. If it has something, use a trait. If it is something, use a nested factory.

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