Correct way of testing "associations" with Rspec?

Question

I am trying to test the following scenario:

-> I have a model called Team which it just makes sense when it has been created by a User. Therefore, each Team instance has to be related to a User.

In order to test that, I have done the following:

describe Team do

...

  it "should be associated with a user" do
    no_user_team = Team.new(:user => nil)
    no_user_team.should_not be_valid
  end

...

end

Which forces me to change the Team model as:

class Team < ActiveRecord::Base
  # Setup accessible (or protected) attributes for your model
  attr_accessible :name, :user

  validates_presence_of :name
  validates_presence_of :user

  belongs_to :user
end

Does this seem correct to you? I am just worried of make the :user attribute as accessible (mass assignment).

Answer 1

I usually use this approach:

describe User do
  it "should have many teams" do
    t = User.reflect_on_association(:teams)
    expect(t.macro).to eq(:has_many)
  end
end

A better solution would be to use the gem shoulda which will allow you to simply:

describe Team do
  it { should belong_to(:user) }
end