Reputation: 291
OK, so there's a bunch of answers on related topics, but for some reason it seems that no one is interested in the following very-real problem:
I have a Timecard
model, with to_date
and from_date
fields. I'm using jquery.ui.datepicker
and generally speaking - all is well. I'm also using the 'validates_timeliness' gem:
class Timecard < ActiveRecord::Base
...
validates_date :to_date
validates_date :from_date
...
end
However, if the user decides to manually edit the text field, entering something like '29-Feb-2013' (which is an invalid date), this date will be converted to '01-Mar-2013'. The following spec will fail:
describe "POST #create" do
...
context "with invalid attributes (invalid date)" do
it "re-renders the :new template" do
timecard = fix_date_attribs_for(:timecard_feb)
# Manually create an invalid date in the params hash - Feb only has 28 days
timecard['to_date(3i)'] = 29
post :create, timecard: timecard
response.should render_template :new
end
end
...
end
The following puts
in timecards_controller.rb:
def create
@timecard = Timecard.new(timecard_params)
puts ">>>> #{@timecard.valid?} - #{@timecard.to_yaml}"
...
end
yields the following output when running the above spec:
.>>>> true - --- !ruby/object:Timecard
attributes:
id:
name: February 2013
from_date: 2013-02-01
to_date: 2013-03-01
created_at:
updated_at:
F
Failures:
1) TimecardsController POST #create with invalid attributes (invalid date) re-renders the :new template
Failure/Error: response.should render_template :new
expecting <"new"> but rendering with <[]>
# ./spec/controllers/timecards_controller_spec.rb:65:in `block (4 levels) in <top (required)>'
Finished in 0.28495 seconds
17 examples, 1 failure
How do I do input validation here? Using callbacks in the model seem too far off (since the problem occurs before - when the controller does @timecard = Timecard.new(timecard_params)
). I could try to catch a Date.new(relevant_timecard_params)
exception in the controller, but it doesn't have access to the errors
hash so I wouldn't be able to tell the user it's an invalid date, not to mention that the controller doesn't sound like the right place to do input validation... Please help...
With 'validate_timeliness' as @Grantovich suggested below (with the plugin enabled) and save
and update
fail with invalid dates such as '29-Feb-2013' even without writing validates_date :to_date
in the model. When adding validates_date
, save
and update
fail and the validated fields are set to nil
even on perfectly valid input (by the validation logic, I suspect).
Also tried specifying the format: validates_date :to_date, format: 'dd-mmm-yyyy'
but got the same results.
Upvotes: 0
Views: 1971
Reputation: 2232
The behavior you're seeing comes from the standard Ruby time parser, which validates_timeliness uses by default. You can see this by manually running your example through Time.parse
:
irb(main):001:0> Time.parse('29-Feb-2013')
=> 2013-03-01 00:00:00 -0500
This section of the validates_timeliness README says the optional timeliness
parser is "more strict than the Ruby parser, which means it won’t accept day of the month if it’s not a valid number for the month". This seems like exactly the behavior you want, so I'd try putting the following in a validates_timeliness.rb
initializer (or adding the config line if you already have one):
ValidatesTimeliness.setup do |config|
config.use_plugin_parser = true
end
Upvotes: 2