Rails - Apr 2006 - Validating Existing Models

I''ve got a user object which has quite a few attributes mapped to the 
database.  As of right now I''ve got some validations in the model like:

validates_presence_of :password, :message => "You must specify a valid 
password."
validates_confirmation_of :password, :message => "Password
doesn''t match
the confirmation."
validates_presence_of :username, :message => "Username is
required."
validates_format_of :email_address, :with => 
/^([^@\s]+)@((?:[-a-z0-9]+\.)+[a-z]{2,})$/i, :on => :create, :message => 
"Email address not a valid format."
validates_uniqueness_of :email_address, :scope => :email_address, 
:message => "Email address has already been registered or is not
valid."
validates_uniqueness_of :username, :scope => :username, :message => 
"Username is already taken."

It may be a bit of overkill, but anyways.  The problem I''m having is 
that this works fine for registering a new user.  But when I want to 
update the user I can''t simply do:

user = User.update(params[:user][''id''].to_i, params[:user])

When I try this, the validation doesn''t occur.  I want it to validate, 
but ONLY certain things.  For example, I dont want it to validate the 
username uniqueness on an update, or the email uniqueness if the user 
didn''t try to change it (but DO want to if they did change it).

Is there a way to specify different rules using the validate_on_update 
overriding method or something similar?  The docs on validate_on_update 
seem kind of slim so I''m not exactly sure how to implement this 
conditional validation.

-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

I hate replying to my own threads, but I did just realize that I can use 
the validate_on_create and validate_on_update to manually create my own 
validations instead of relying on the helpers.  This is great because it 
gives me much finer control over my validation.

So, that being said, my next question relating to this is, can I access 
the params from validate_on_update or create?

Right now, I found an article about creating custom accessors so I did 
that and created new_password and password_confirmation that don''t map 
back to the database.  I set these values before called user.save.  It 
works, but is there an easier way to create an accessor than this?

    def new_password=(pass)
        write_attribute("new_password", pass)
    end

    def new_password
        read_attribute("new_password")
    end

Any ideas?

The Barge wrote:
> I''ve got a user object which has quite a few attributes mapped to
the
> database.  As of right now I''ve got some validations in the model
like:
> 
> validates_presence_of :password, :message => "You must specify a
valid
> password."
> validates_confirmation_of :password, :message => "Password
doesn''t match
> the confirmation."
> validates_presence_of :username, :message => "Username is
required."
> validates_format_of :email_address, :with => 
> /^([^@\s]+)@((?:[-a-z0-9]+\.)+[a-z]{2,})$/i, :on => :create, :message
=>
> "Email address not a valid format."
> validates_uniqueness_of :email_address, :scope => :email_address, 
> :message => "Email address has already been registered or is not
valid."
> validates_uniqueness_of :username, :scope => :username, :message => 
> "Username is already taken."
> 
> It may be a bit of overkill, but anyways.  The problem I''m having
is
> that this works fine for registering a new user.  But when I want to 
> update the user I can''t simply do:
> 
> user = User.update(params[:user][''id''].to_i,
params[:user])
> 
> When I try this, the validation doesn''t occur.  I want it to
validate,
> but ONLY certain things.  For example, I dont want it to validate the 
> username uniqueness on an update, or the email uniqueness if the user 
> didn''t try to change it (but DO want to if they did change it).
> 
> Is there a way to specify different rules using the validate_on_update 
> overriding method or something similar?  The docs on validate_on_update 
> seem kind of slim so I''m not exactly sure how to implement this 
> conditional validation.

-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.