Error_messages_for does not display the error

Rails
1

Hi all

I’ve approached Rails since a couple of months to develop a quick
application for my company. Fantastic framework. As every noob, I do
have some gaps to cover. The one which is giving me a little
frustration, generated by my lack of knowledge is as follows.

I need to make sure the region object is not deleted if there are
countries associated with it. I solved this by putting a
before_destroy methon in the model, as follows:

class Region < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :countries

validates_presence_of :name
validates_uniqueness_of :name

def before_destroy
unless countries.count == 0
errors.add_to_base “Cannot delete a region with countries
associated”
return false
end
end
end

This prevents the deletion if countries are associated to it. By
adding the error to the errors collection of the region object, I
expected to receive a message on the page by adding the follwing in
the application layout

—cut—
<%= error_messages_for :region %>
<%= yield :layout %>
—cut—

actually the error_messages_for is much longer as it lists all the
objects. The tag works for input forms, but in this specific scenario
no error message is displayed.

The error is however populated, I verified it with the logger.info in
the various steps.

After crushing my head trying to figure out why, I gave up the old
way, finding another solution. But I do not like it because ruby and
rails are very elegant in their syntax. Here is what I did: in the
controller I modified the destroy method like this

def destroy
@region = Region.find(params[:id])
@region.destroy

@region.errors.each_full{|msg| flash[:error] = msg } unless

@region.errors.count == 0

respond_to do |format|
  format.html { redirect_to(regions_url) }
  format.xml  { head :ok }
end

end

I know, it’s an horror, I can name many resons why including the fact
that only the last error is displayed, but could not figure out a
better way. I’m pretty sure that the solution is right in front of me
but cannot find it…

Any suggestion very welcome.

Thanks

2

This might help you out…

http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionController/Flash.html

Although it’s not immediately apparent from the rdocs, you can flash
[:error] in addition to the documented flash[:notify] - think of them
as “alerts” and “alarms”. If you carry the error/notify distinction
into the erb with:

 <% if flash[:notice] %>
   <div class="notice"><%= flash[:notice] %></div>
 <% end %>
  <% if flash[:error] %>
   <div class="error"><%= flash[:error] %></div>
 <% end %>

you can use the class to provide css color decoration (notice <=>
yellow, error <=> red)

Just be aware that the flash is a temporary buffer - the text is
volatile by default - and refreshing the window will erase the
message.

3

On Apr 2, 10:32 pm, Rick [email protected] wrote:

This might help you out…

ActionController::Flash

Although it’s not immediately apparent from the rdocs, you can flash
[:error] in addition to the documented flash[:notify] - think of them
as “alerts” and “alarms”. If you carry the error/notify distinction
into the erb with:

To extend on that, flash is just a hash (which happens to be stored in
the session and which rails clears out appropriately) - you can store
anything you want in it, for any key you want.

Fred

4

Hi all

I found the solution to my problems…

My mistake (of course because of ignorance) was to look in the wrong
place. The error populated in the model.errors hash are rendered by
the error_messages_for method only if the render method in the
ActionController is invoked.

Therefore the code should look like this.

The model:

class Region < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :countries

validates_presence_of :name
validates_uniqueness_of :name

def before_destroy
unless countries.count == 0
errors.add_to_base “Cannot delete a region with countries
associated”
return false
end
end
end

The method destroy in the controller

def destroy
@region = Region.find(params[:id])

respond_to do |format|
  if @region.destroy
    format.html { redirect_to(regions_url) }
    format.xml  { head :ok }
  else
    format.html { render :action => "show" }
    format.xml  { render :xml => @region.errors, :status

=> :unprocessable_entity }
end
end
end

Et voilà, here is the error displayed on screen…

Steve