Rails 3: How to Simulate Paperclip Attachments With FactoryGirl

In developing the next phase of markstocks.com, I needed to simulate a file upload attribute in my FactoryGirl factories. A quick Google revealed some promising code, but everything out there was based on Rails 2.

There's been a lot of changes in Rails 3, so using what I found, I tweaked the code to work in my Rails 3 factories. I've also posted this code as a gist forked from the original Rails 2 version on Github.

# spec/spec_helper.rb
...

# Support for Paperclip factories (add this before you load your factory definitions)

include ActionDispatch::TestProcess

# spec/support/factory_attachment.rb

Factory.class_eval do
  def attachment(name, path, content_type = "image/jpg")
    path_with_rails_root = "#{Rails.root}/#{path}"
    uploaded_file = fixture_file_upload(path_with_rails_root, content_type)
    add_attribute name, uploaded_file
  end
end

# spec/factories/photos.rb

Factory.define :photo do |p|
  # Given a Photo model with has_attached_file :image
  p.attachment :image, "spec/support/sample_photo.jpg"
end

References

1. Original Gist
2. APIDock.com