Factory Girl has saved me countless hours - I love it. You can use build instead of create to avoid the db, as per previous comments. You don't have to use it

Factory Girl has saved me countless hours - I love it. You can use build instead of create to avoid the db, as per previous comments. You don't have to use it at all if writing a simple unit test. But for teeing up complex scenarios prior to a fat integration test, it rocks.