CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ruby-on-railsrubyyaml
vvbdtt
vvbdtt

Reputation: 82

How to keep en.yml DRY?

I have a en.yml which contains the following

en:
  article:
    title:
      format: "Requires at least one alphanumeric character"
    title_format: "Title Requires at least one alphanumeric character"

The article.title.format is used in my article model and article.title_format is used in article_test test. Is there any way to make this DRY?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 72

Answers (1)

Chiperific
Chiperific

Reputation: 4686

YAML is limited for things like this, but you do have anchors, aliases and merge_keys. This SO answer is VERY exhaustive on this issue.

So, you can repeat the exact same message, but not modify that message without some other library or code injection:

&standard_answer: "Requires at least one alphanumeric character" 
en:
  article:
    title:
      format: *standard_answer
    title_format: *standard_answer

in Ruby, is equivalent to:

en:
  article:
    title:
      format: "Requires at least one alphanumeric character" 
    title_format: "Requires at least one alphanumeric character"

To answer the question you aren't asking...

If you are trying to test model validations, I think you're doing too much anyway:

  • These will break if Rails decides to tweak the language used
  • Your tests now rely on your i18n file just to find a hard-coded string
  • It's less readable because the test constraints are now in 2 separate files (but it is more compact, so you could argue that)

What you want to know is: "Can I save this record without any alphanumeric characters in the title?"

I would only test whether the validation succeeds or fails.

If you're using RSpec, I like this pattern.

Or, another option, RSpec Expectations ships with Predicate matchers:

# prove the record is valid
expect(record).to be_valid

# make the record invalid in only 1 way
record.title = 'does not have a number'
expect(record).to be_invalid # also works: expect(record).not_to be_valid

Note that I'm making sure the record is valid first, then changing one thing, then checking for validity again. This helps ensure you are testing the right validation.

Upvotes: 1

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