I'm a big fan of using FactoryBot when testing my Rails Apps with RSpec. The DSL is super easy to work with, so adding variations of a model for my tests is a breeze.

One drawback when working with factories (and fixtures!) is when a models validation or schema change, causing your factory to no longer be valid. It can sometimes be a little unobvious on exactly where the issue is.

A technique I use to help stop this, is to test the validity of the factories along with their traits at the start of my test suite.

To do this in RSpec, I setup a file in spec/factories_spec.rb with the following contents:

# spec/factories_spec.rb
require 'rails_helper'

describe FactoryBot do
  it { FactoryBot.lint traits: true }
end

Now whenever I get tripped up by an weird failing test, I can verify the factories I'm using in my tests are in the DB & working as intended.

Update: I updated my sample to use FactoryBot.lint - It's a way better approach to doing this.