To me, fixtures are a code smell. If you need so much common setup to test your application, the code under testing is doing too much. It's unfortunately quite common in Rails or Django projects. You need to pass the Foo model to your function, but it will lookup foo.bar.baz, so you need to wire up these as well, which again need further models. Of course everything also talks with the database.
Instead, if you're able to decouple the ORM from your application, with a separate layer, and instead pass plain objects around (not fat db backed models), one is much freer to write code that's "pure". This input gives that output. For tests like these one only needs to create whatever data structure the function desires, and then verify the output. Worst case verify that it called some mocks with x,y,z.
Instead, if you're able to decouple the ORM from your application, with a separate layer, and instead pass plain objects around (not fat db backed models), one is much freer to write code that's "pure". This input gives that output. For tests like these one only needs to create whatever data structure the function desires, and then verify the output. Worst case verify that it called some mocks with x,y,z.