Question

I know you can easily test a belongs to relationship using Shoulda:

describe Dog dog
  it { should belong_to(:owner) }
end

Is it possible to test a more complicated belongs_to relationship using Shoulda? Something like this:

class Dog < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :owner, :class_name => "Person", :foreign_key => "person_id"
end

Answer 1

You should be able to use:

it { should belong_to(:owner).class_name('Person') }

Shoulda’s belong_to matcher always reads the foreign_key from the association and tests that it is a valid field name, so you don’t need to do anything more.

(See Shoulda::Matchers::ActiveRecord::AssociationMatcher#foreign_key_exists? and associated methods)