Question

I am building an application that will have a model that belongs_to another model most of the time, but in some other instances it will just need to be standalone and not have parents.

Just an example:

class Book < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :pieces_of_paper
end

class PieceOfPaper < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :books
end

But sometimes I will need to save a piece of paper without it belonging to a book

What would be the best/proper way to code for this?

I have looked around for an example of this and couldn’t find anything and maybe that’s just it, I could just be over thinking this and it’s very simple. I’ll be thankful for any help anyone can provide, thanks.

Answer 1

Yes, it’s very simple and I think you are “over thinking” it.
You can either test it in “rails console” or “unit test/rspec” environment.

e.g. rspec:

require 'spec_helper'
describe PieceOfPaper do
  it "should be saved without assigning the book it belongs to" do 
    expect {
      # should create without error.
      PieceOfPaper.create(:book_id => nil)    
    }.to change(PieceOfPaper, :count).by(1)
  end
end