can't use inherited associations in Cucumber steps

[eostrom]

This broke somewhere between factory_girl 2.1.0 and 2.5.1.

Given a simplified set of factories (for illustration; I haven't built an executable test case):

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
end

class Profile < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :user
end

FactoryGirl.define do
  factory :user do
    email ''
  end

  factory :profile do
    user
  end

  factory :published_profile, :parent => :profile do
    published true
  end
end

A step like this used to work:

Given the following published profile exists:
    | User                    |
    | email: user@example.com |

Now it raises an exception: User(#2193859180) expected, got String(#2151988680) (ActiveRecord::AssociationTypeMismatch)

I've tracked the problem as far as lib/factory_girl/step_definitions.rb:

        attributes = convert_human_hash_to_attribute_hash(human_hash, factory.associations)

factory.associations returns an empty array. If we define the user association directly in the :published_profile factory, the step succeeds - but I'd rather inherit it from :profile.

I'd be happy to work on a patch, but I'm not sure what the expected behavior should be. Should factory.associations include inherited associations? Should the step definition be calling a different method?

[joshuaclayton]

@eostrom IIRC factory#associations is only used by the step definitions, so it should be fine to change it there. I think it makes sense for the factory to calculate associations based on its inherited factories