Failing HMT test when checking for "destroy" dependency

Question

I'm currently writing RSpec tests to validate associations in my Rails application. Specifically, I'm trying to ensure that the Artist model has a proper association with Albums through the artist_albums join table/model. However, my test is failing despite setting up the associations correctly in my models.

RSpec.describe Artist, type: :model do
  describe 'associations' do
    it 'should have albums through artist_albums' do
      artist_association = described_class.reflect_on_association(:albums)
  
      expect(artist_association.macro).to eq(:has_many)
      expect(artist_association.through_reflection.name).to eq(:artist_albums)
    end
  end
end

Here's the error:

expect(album_association.options[:dependent]).to eq(:destroy)
     
expected: :destroy
  got: nil
     
(compared using ==)

Models:

class Artist < ApplicationRecord
  has_many :artist_albums
  has_many :albums, through: :artist_albums
end

class ArtistAlbum < ApplicationRecord
  belongs_to :artist
  belongs_to :album
end

class Album < ApplicationRecord
  has_many :artist_albums
  has_many :artists, through: :artist_albums
end

Despite setting up the associations as expected, the test fails with an error. I'm not sure why this is happening. Any insights or suggestions on how to troubleshoot and fix this issue would be greatly appreciated! Thank you.

Answer 1

I needed to invoke through_reflection to access the options hash:

expect(artist_association.through_reflection.options[:dependent]).to eq(:destroy)