Hooks

Within a factory definition block and the FactoryBot.define block, you have access to the after, before, and callback methods. This allow you to hook into parts of the build strategies.

Within a factory definition block, these callbacks are scoped to just that factory. Within a FactoryBot.define block, they are global to all factories.

callback

The callback method allows you to hook into any factory_bot callback by name. The pre-defined names, as seen in the build strategies reference, are before_all, after_build, before_create, after_create, after_stub, and after_all.

This method takes a splat of names, and a block. It invokes the block any time one of the names is activated. The block can be anything that responds to #to_proc.

This block takes two arguments: the instance of the factory, and the factory_bot context. The context holds transient attributes.

The same callback name can be hooked into multiple times. Every block is run, in the order it was defined. Callbacks are inherited from their parents; the parents' callbacks are run first.

after and before methods

The after and before methods add some nice syntax to callback:

after(:create) do |user, context|
  user.post_first_article(context.article)
end

callback(:after_create) do |user, context|
  user.post_first_article(context.article)
end