I''ve started to put together a custom expectation matcher for specifying AR associations. Its not quite complete and I really need to put some specs together for it, but I''d appreciate any comments. It lets you spec your associations like this: describe Record do include ActiveRecordAssociationMatchers it "should belong to artist and use a counter cache" do Record.should belong_to(:artist).with_options(:counter_cache => true) end it "should have_many tracks" do Record.should have_many(:tracks).with_class_name("Song).and_options(:include => :writers) end end Please see my blog entry or the pastie for more details. http://stevetooke.karmatrading.co.uk/2007/8/10/simple-rails-association-matching-with-rspec http://pastie.caboo.se/86604