CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ruby-on-railsvalidationruby-on-rails-4
MechDog
MechDog

Reputation: 548

Rails pass a form parameter to determine if a validation

I'm trying to selectively enforce validations on a model. I want the model to enforce them when data is entered from users, but when running files in I want to ignore the validations sometimes. I came up with the less then intelligent method of setting a boolean to TRUE when adding from the web user. Seemed great until I need to update from the file and now I basically have to switch the boolean on all the records. Here is some of my code:

class Identity < ActiveRecord::Base

   validate :validate_spouse_age, :if => "web_add?"
   validates :ssn, length: { is: 9 }

   def validate_spouse_age
      if (relationship == "S" || relationship == "DP") && !dob.nil? && web_add? && age<16
      errors.add(:dob, :spouse_under_age)
    end
    true
   end
end

So on the web form I just add a hidden_fiedl setting 'web_add' to true and the validation runs and that gets saved to the record. But now when I want to run the following I have to set the boolean back to false or the validation will still run.

identity.web_add=false #to allow it to be updated without validation fails
identity.update_attributes!(
    namefirst:          line.FIRST_NAME,
    namelast:           line.LAST_NAME
    )

I'm sure there is a smarter way to do this. Why I'm not just ignoring the validation completely is there are some validations that I want to run regardless of the data source. For example, the SSN needs to be there or it should fail out.

Any help would be more then appreciated!!!

Upvotes: 1

Views: 113

Answers (1)

JeffD23
JeffD23

Reputation: 9308

You can skip the entire 'web_add' boolean and use the update_attribute method in your non-web method. You will need to update each attribute individually, but it will skip the validations and commit the changes to the database. You could implement something like: 

instance.update_attribute(name, value)

in your case

identity.update_attribute(:namefirst, line.FIRST_NAME)
identity.update_attribute(:namelast, line.LAST_NAME)

When a web user submits a form, the validations will run normally. When you run the update_attribute method, the validations will be skipped.

Here's a list of all the methods available to skip activerecord validations: 

decrement!
decrement_counter
increment!
increment_counter
toggle!
touch
update_all
update_attribute
update_column
update_counters

Upvotes: 1

Related Questions