Rails - Sep 2008 - how remove blank leading spaces before validates_uniqueness_of

Hi again, I have a problem when I try to validate uniqueness of data
entered through text fields in this particular circumstance.
Let say that I have a text field which has a validates_uniqueness_of
on its respective model.
And let say that the user enter for that field the value "Stanley
Kubrick" and it is saved without problems.

On the listing I will see the entered value "Stanley Kubrick", as it
was supposed to be.

Then I use the same form to enter the value "Stanley Kubrick " (with a
blank space at the end) and, obviously, validation will let it pass.
The problem begins when the user will see on the listing two
"apparently" duplicated records like this:

- Stanley Kubrick
- Stanley Kubrick

What I need is a short way to remove those leading blank spaces before
the validation that doesn''t push me to change a hundred of models in
my applications.

Peace!!
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before_validation :strip_white_space

def strip_white_space
 self........

On Sep 22, 12:18 pm, "paco.onrails"
<pacorey...-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
> Hi again, I have a problem when I try to validate uniqueness of data
> entered through text fields in this particular circumstance.
> Let say that I have a text field which has a validates_uniqueness_of
> on its respective model.
> And let say that the user enter for that field the value "Stanley
> Kubrick" and it is saved without problems.
>
> On the listing I will see the entered value "Stanley Kubrick", as
it
> was supposed to be.
>
> Then I use the same form to enter the value "Stanley Kubrick "
(with a
> blank space at the end) and, obviously, validation will let it pass.
> The problem begins when the user will see on the listing two
> "apparently" duplicated records like this:
>
> - Stanley Kubrick
> - Stanley Kubrick
>
> What I need is a short way to remove those leading blank spaces before
> the validation that doesn''t push me to change a hundred of models
in
> my applications.
>
> Peace!!
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On Sep 23, 3:18 am, "paco.onrails"
<pacorey...-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
> Hi again, I have a problem when I try to validate uniqueness of data
> entered through text fields in this particular circumstance.
> Let say that I have a text field which has a validates_uniqueness_of
> on its respective model.
> And let say that the user enter for that field the value "Stanley
> Kubrick" and it is saved without problems.
>
> On the listing I will see the entered value "Stanley Kubrick", as
it
> was supposed to be.
>
> Then I use the same form to enter the value "Stanley Kubrick "
(with a
> blank space at the end) and, obviously, validation will let it pass.
> The problem begins when the user will see on the listing two
> "apparently" duplicated records like this:
>
> - Stanley Kubrick
> - Stanley Kubrick
>
> What I need is a short way to remove those leading blank spaces before
> the validation that doesn''t push me to change a hundred of models
in
> my applications.
>
> Peace!!
Try this:

class Person
  before_validation :strip_blanks

  protected

  def strip_blanks
    self.name = self.name.strip
  end
end
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Although this is a reasonably clean and straight forward solution, is 
there a compelling reason that Rails itself doesn''t trim leading and 
trailing whitespace from text fields? It seems to me that would be a 
reasonable "intelligent" default. How often would you want to preserve
the leading and trailing whitespace entered by a user?

Wouldn''t it make sense instead to have a way of overriding the trimming
only when necessary? Anyway, just some thoughts.

This is one of two things that I personally wish was done differently in 
Rails form processing. The second is that I would prefer that fields 
containing nothing (or whitespace only) were interpreted as nil rather 
than an empty string. I don''t like having empty strings in my database 
where I would expect the value to be NULL. However, I realize that 
others may not agree with me on this one, so maybe have an application 
wide configuration setting to tell Rails how to interpret empty text 
fields.

I suppose there might also be a way to implement this type of behavior 
in a before_filter of the application controller. I''ll have to do some 
experimenting with that...

Erol Fornoles wrote:
> On Sep 23, 3:18�am, "paco.onrails"
<pacorey...-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org> wrote:
>> Then I use the same form to enter the value "Stanley Kubrick
" (with a
>>
>> Peace!!
> 
> Try this:
> 
> class Person
>   before_validation :strip_blanks
> 
>   protected
> 
>   def strip_blanks
>     self.name = self.name.strip
>   end
> end
-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

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On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 6:06 AM, Robert Walker <
rails-mailing-list@andreas-s.net> wrote:
>
> Although this is a reasonably clean and straight forward solution, is
> there a compelling reason that Rails itself doesn't trim leading and
> trailing whitespace from text fields? It seems to me that would be a
> reasonable "intelligent" default. How often would you want to
preserve
> the leading and trailing whitespace entered by a user?
>
> Wouldn't it make sense instead to have a way of overriding the trimming
> only when necessary? Anyway, just some thoughts.
>
> This is one of two things that I personally wish was done differently in
> Rails form processing. The second is that I would prefer that fields
> containing nothing (or whitespace only) were interpreted as nil rather
> than an empty string. I don't like having empty strings in my database
> where I would expect the value to be NULL. However, I realize that
> others may not agree with me on this one, so maybe have an application
> wide configuration setting to tell Rails how to interpret empty text
> fields.
>
> I suppose there might also be a way to implement this type of behavior
> in a before_filter of the application controller. I'll have to do some
> experimenting with that...
>
You have a good idea but I don't think that you want to start modifying the
standard functionality of Rails helpers that are to mirror the standard HTML
tags.
Also, it seems that you have written more in your argument to add trimming
to the
text field tag than it took to actually write the ruby code to do it. :-)
 In short, I would
leave the post processing of input to the methods that are tasked to do it.

-Conrad

>
> Erol Fornoles wrote:
> > On Sep 23, 3:18�am, "paco.onrails"
<pacorey...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Then I use the same form to enter the value "Stanley Kubrick
" (with a
> >>
> >> Peace!!
> >
> > Try this:
> >
> > class Person
> >   before_validation :strip_blanks
> >
> >   protected
> >
> >   def strip_blanks
> >     self.name = self.name.strip
> >   end
> > end
>
> --
> Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
>
> >
>
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>  In short, I would
> leave the post processing of input to the methods that are tasked to do 
> it.
I''m sure you''re right. I was just sorting of thinking out
loud, fishing
for other people''s opinions.

It just seemed to me that some basic pre-processing of user input by the 
Rails subsystem could alleviate having to handle these issues on a 
nearly-every-case basis.

I can''t think of too many cases where I would want to preserve the 
leading and trailing whitespace from a text field. So I''d rather have
to
add some extra code in order to preserve whitespace, rather than adding 
code to practically every model to ensure I''m getting them trimmed.

I think it would be actually be nice if accessing something like 
params[:some_value] for :some_value to be trimmed of leading and 
trailing whitespace unless told otherwise.

Conrad Taylor wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 6:06 AM, Robert Walker <
> rails-mailing-list-ARtvInVfO7ksV2N9l4h3zg@public.gmane.org> wrote:
> 
>> This is one of two things that I personally wish was done differently
in
>> experimenting with that...
>>
> 
> You have a good idea but I don''t think that you want to start
modifying
> the
> standard functionality of Rails helpers that are to mirror the standard 
> HTML
> tags.
> Also, it seems that you have written more in your argument to add 
> trimming
> to the
> text field tag than it took to actually write the ruby code to do it. 
> :-)
>  In short, I would
> leave the post processing of input to the methods that are tasked to do 
> it.
> 
> -Conrad
-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

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On Sep 23, 11:33 pm, Robert Walker
<rails-mailing-l...-ARtvInVfO7ksV2N9l4h3zg@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
> I''m sure you''re right. I was just sorting of thinking out
loud, fishing
> for other people''s opinions.
>
> It just seemed to me that some basic pre-processing of user input by the
> Rails subsystem could alleviate having to handle these issues on a
> nearly-every-case basis.
>
> I can''t think of too many cases where I would want to preserve the
> leading and trailing whitespace from a text field. So I''d rather
have to
> add some extra code in order to preserve whitespace, rather than adding
> code to practically every model to ensure I''m getting them
trimmed.
>
> I think it would be actually be nice if accessing something like
> params[:some_value] for :some_value to be trimmed of leading and
> trailing whitespace unless told otherwise.
Rails is probably just following the principle of least astonishment.
Most devs, or atleast those I know of, still expects user input to be
saved as is.
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