Rails - Oct 2010 - need a way to use sort_by with possible nil values

In my view, I do a

<%= render :partial => ''person'', :collection =>
@household.people.sort_by(&:birthday) %>

household has a has_many relationship with person, and this works fine
until...

an errant user creates a new person and tries to save without filling
the fields(day, month, and year). After this the birthday field is
created and fails horribly. Is there any way to delete blank records
as part of the validation??


Thanks

Bob     <bsm2th-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>

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On 1 October 2010 07:19, Bob Smith
<bsm2th-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
> Is there any way to delete blank records as part of the validation??
What do you mean "as part of the validation"? Which validation? What
records do you want to delete? Why allow them to save if they''re not
valid?

There are lots of ways you can stop the errors though - it just
depends which direction you want to approach it:
 * You could add validation to the Person model to make birthday mandatory.
 * You could add a method to Person called "birthday" which returns
the birthday attribute or a dummy date (you could call this method
"birthday_for_sort" - to make it clear what its purpose is, and to
maintain the AR method for )
 * you could remove records from the people collection before the sort_by:
     @household.people.delete_if { |p| p.birthday.blank?
}.sort_by(&:birthday)
 * you could add a fake dob value before the sort_by:
     @household.people.each { |p| p.birthday = "1 Jan 1900" if
p.birthday.bllank? }.sort_by(&:birthday)

and more ways to crack the nut...
Some of them smell more than others - depends, as ever, on what you
actually want to achieve... but maybe you can get some idea of how to
sort your problem.

HTH

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You could use ''accepts_nested_attributes_for'' in your parent
model:

accepts_nested_attributes_for :children_models,
    :allow_destroy => true,
    :reject_if => proc {|attributes|
attributes[''your_attribute''].blank?}

The ''reject_if'' is what does the trick.

On Oct 1, 2:19 am, Bob Smith
<bsm...-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
> In my view, I do a
>
> <%= render :partial => ''person'', :collection =>
> @household.people.sort_by(&:birthday) %>
>
> household has a has_many relationship with person, and this works fine
> until...
>
> an errant user creates a new person and tries to save without filling
> the fields(day, month, and year). After this the birthday field is
> created and fails horribly. Is there any way to delete blank records
> as part of the validation??
>
> Thanks
>
> Bob     <bsm...-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>
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On Oct 1, 2010, at 2:19 AM, Bob Smith wrote:
> In my view, I do a
>
> <%= render :partial => ''person'', :collection =>
> @household.people.sort_by(&:birthday) %>
>
> household has a has_many relationship with person, and this works fine
> until...
>
> an errant user creates a new person and tries to save without filling
> the fields(day, month, and year). After this the birthday field is
> created and fails horribly. Is there any way to delete blank records
> as part of the validation??
>
>
> Thanks
>
> Bob     <bsm2th-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>
While I''m not contradicting the responses from Michael and pepe,
I''m
going to lead you a different way.

First, I''ll suggest that you don''t have this level of code in
your
view. Put a method on your Household model that returns the people in  
the proper order.  Your view code then becomes:

<%= render :partial => ''person'', :collection =>  
@household.people_by_birthday %>

(Which in later version of Rails can be
  just <%= render @household.people_by_birthday %> )

Second, use one of the methods given by Michael or pepe to keep  
persons having invalid (or missing) birthdays from being created.

Finally, as a possible implementation of the #people_by_birthday  
method (note that I''m assuming that there''s a #name method on
which to
sort the persons having no birthday):

class Household
   def people_by_birthday
     list = self.people.partition {|person| person.birthday.blank?}
     list[1].sort_by(&:birthday) + list[0].sort_by(&:name)
   end
end

-Rob


Rob Biedenharn		
Rob-xa9cJyRlE0mWcWVYNo9pwxS2lgjeYSpx@public.gmane.org
http://AgileConsultingLLC.com/
rab-/VpnD74mH8+00s0LW7PaslaTQe2KTcn/@public.gmane.org	
http://GaslightSoftware.com/

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Michael Pavling wrote:
> On 1 October 2010 07:19, Bob Smith
<bsm2th-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org> wrote:
>> Is there any way to delete blank records as part of the validation??
> 
> What do you mean "as part of the validation"? Which validation?
What
> records do you want to delete? Why allow them to save if they''re
not
> valid?
> 
> There are lots of ways you can stop the errors though - it just
> depends which direction you want to approach it:
>  * You could add validation to the Person model to make birthday 
> mandatory.
>  * You could add a method to Person called "birthday" which
returns
> the birthday attribute or a dummy date (you could call this method
> "birthday_for_sort" - to make it clear what its purpose is, and
to
> maintain the AR method for )
>  * you could remove records from the people collection before the 
> sort_by:
>      @household.people.delete_if { |p| p.birthday.blank? 
> }.sort_by(&:birthday)
>  * you could add a fake dob value before the sort_by:
>      @household.people.each { |p| p.birthday = "1 Jan 1900" if
> p.birthday.bllank? }.sort_by(&:birthday)
> 
> and more ways to crack the nut...
> Some of them smell more than others - depends, as ever, on what you
> actually want to achieve... but maybe you can get some idea of how to
> sort your problem.
> 
> HTH
Sorry, not enough information.. again..

My view has 4 fields for new records: sex month, day, and year. It also 
has a new person link that creates as many new empty records as needed.
After the ''Save Changes'' link is clicked, my controller then
validates
these fields and makes a birthday field using whatever is entered ( 
Sounds like I should put this action in the model ). The problem comes 
if a new person record is left without any data. It looks like the model 
isn''t saving these empty records, but they are still in the 
@household.people collection, killing a call to sort_by. All this 
trouble to put the birthdays in order..

Thanks

Bob <bsm2th-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>
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On 1 October 2010 21:30, Bob Smith
<lists-fsXkhYbjdPsEEoCn2XhGlw@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
> After the ''Save Changes'' link is clicked, my controller
then validates
> these fields and makes a birthday field using whatever is entered
Your controller shouldn''t be doing any "validation" - the
model should
be doing that (but maybe you mean the controller is ensuring
"Person.valid?" ?)
> Sounds like I should put this action in the model
ah... yes, you should really
> if a new person record is left without any data. It looks like the model
> isn''t saving these empty records, but they are still in the
> @household.people collection
So try to see how my suggestion of using .delete_if (or .reject) on
the collection to remove invalid items works for you:
   @household.people.reject { |person| !person.valid? }

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Rob Biedenharn wrote:
> class Household
>    def people_by_birthday
>      list = self.people.partition {|person| person.birthday.blank?}
>      list[1].sort_by(&:birthday) + list[0].sort_by(&:name)
>    end
> end
> 
> -Rob
This is the method I ended up with, almost.. I did

  def people_by_birthday
     list = self.people.partition {|person| person.birthday.blank?}
     list[1].sort_by(&:birthday)# + list[0].sort_by(&:name)
     return list[1]
  end

I had no use for the empty part of the partition, do it left.. Works 
perfectly.
Only problem now is that clearing empty dates trips the error message 
from failed validations.

Thanks a lot

Bob
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