ruby on rails 3 - FactoryGirl: why does attributes_for omit some attributes?

Question

I want to use FactoryGirl.attributes_for in controller testing, as in:

it "raise error creating a new PremiseGroup for this user" do
  expect {
    post :create, {:premise_group => FactoryGirl.attributes_for(:premise_group)}
  }.to raise_error(CanCan::AccessDenied)
end

... but this doesn't work because #attributes_for omits the :user_id attribute. Here is the difference between #create and #attributes_for:

>> FactoryGirl.create(:premise_group)
=> #<PremiseGroup id: 3, name: "PremiseGroup_4", user_id: 6, is_visible: false, is_open: false)
>> FactoryGirl.attributes_for(:premise_group)
=> {:name=>"PremiseGroup_5", :is_visible=>false, :is_open=>false}

Note that the :user_id is absent from #attributes_for. Is this the expected behavior?

FWIW, my factories file includes definitions for :premise_group and for :user:

FactoryGirl.define do
  ...
  factory :premise_group do
    sequence(:name) {|n| "PremiseGroup_#{n}"}
    user
    is_visible false
    is_open false
  end
  factory :user do
    ...
  end
end

Answer 1

Short Answer:

By design, FactoryGirl's attribues_for intentionally omits things that would trigger a database transaction so tests will run fast. But you can can write a build_attributes method (below) to model all the attributes, if you're willing to take the time hit.

Original answer

Digging deep into the FactoryGirl documentation, e.g. this wiki page, you will find mentions that attributes_for ignores associations -- see update below. As a workaround, I've wrapped a helper method around FactoryGirl.build(...).attributes that strips id, created_at, and updated_at:

def build_attributes(*args)
  FactoryGirl.build(*args).attributes.delete_if do |k, v| 
    ["id", "created_at", "updated_at"].member?(k)
  end
end

So now:

>> build_attributes(:premise_group)
=> {"name"=>"PremiseGroup_21", "user_id"=>29, "is_visible"=>false, "is_open"=>false}

... which is exactly what's expected.

update

Having absorbed the comments from the creators of FactoryGirl, I understand why attributes_for ignores associations: referencing an association generates a call to the db which can greatly slow down tests in some cases. But if you need associations, the build_attributes approach shown above should work.