SmartFactory for Force.com

SmartFactory dynamically creates test data hierarchies with all required fields and relationships pre-populated for Salesforce.com.

How often have you wasted hours reverse-engineering a new schema just to create data for a unit test?

Task__c testTask = new Task__c();
ERROR: Field Desciption__c required on Task__c

Task__c testTask = new Task__c(Description__c = 'Create unit test data');`
ERROR: Lookup relationship Project__c required on Task__c`

Project__c testProject = new Project__c();
Task__c testTask = new Task__c(Project__c = testProject, Description__c = 'Create unit test data');
ERROR: Field Status__c required on Project__c
...

Watch SmartFactory dynamically use the Describe metadata to populate all required fields with valid data and create any related objects:

Task__c testTask = (Task__c)SmartFactory.createSObject('Task__c');

The Evolution of Test Data provides more background on the problem and SmartFactory's solution.

SmartFactory's first version won the Mavens Consulting 2011 Hackathon in less than a single day of coding.

Installation

For easy, 1-click installation: SmartFactory Unmanaged Package (sandbox)

To use the source code with a Salesforce org: GitHub Salesforce Deploy Tool

To prevent the large number of system calls from filling your debug log, you can set logging filter overrides for the SmartFactory class: Setup - Develop - Apex Classes - SmartFactory - Log Filters - System = NONE.

Usage

Just use SmartFactory in your tests to create objects:

Account account = (Account)SmartFactory.createSObject('Account');

To cascade and create objects for lookup and master-detail relationships:

Contact contact = (Contact)SmartFactory.createSObject('Contact', true);

The same syntax is used for custom objects:

Custom_Object__c customObject = (Custom_Object__c)SmartFactory.createSObject('Custom_Object__c');

See SmartFactory_Test for additional examples.

Validation Rules

To set specific values to pass your custom Validation Rules, wrap SmartFactory with your own class like this:

public class TestObjectFactory {
  public static Account createAccount() {
    Account account = (Account)SmartFactory.createSObject('Account');
    account.Customer_Terms__c = 'Net 30';
    return account;
  }
}

You can then call that reusable method from your tests. If you have validation rules on Account or Contact, you may also need to modify SmartFactory_Test.

Future Work

TODO comments note areas for additional development. Key areas include:

1. Provide an field override map that allows callers to specify default values for specific objects and fields
2. Provide a recursion limit for lookups to the same object type

Help and Discussion

For help and discussion, please use the project's Google Group.