Validates_confirmation_of has stopped working

Rails
1

Hi Railers,

I’m past considering myself a noob in Rails land - I think what I’m up
against
here is more of a bug or an anomaly that I’m unaware of (or that has
changed
in a recent version).

I had a fully working validates_confirmation_of :email_address field in
my app

  • was one of the first things I set up, extremely simple, been working
    for a
    long time.

Then one day I notice that it’s not working any more - the validator
basically
doesn’t care if you fill in the email_address field but not
email_address_confirmation, and it certainly doesn’t care if they don’t
match.

I’ve tried looking at the examples again, and my code follows them to
the
letter (with the exception that my field name is different). I’ve
checked the
logs and the appropriate parameters are being sent through.

In desperation, I even tried validates_presence_of
:email_address_confirmation
to ensure that it’s filled in - that works to enforce the field in the
form,
yet the confirmation check still doesn’t seem to take place.

It was my belief (and this certainly worked fine exactly like this for a
long
time) that if I had…

validates_presence_of :email_address
validates_confirmation_of :email_address

… that would take care of enforcing that both fields are filled in and
match
each other.

I haven’t changed anything on this code, yet it’s stopped doing the
confirmation validation.

Could anyone else confirm this is/isn’t the case? I’m running Rails
1.0.0 and
Ruby 1.8.4.

This thread appears to be discussing a similar problem, but it’s not
quite the
same: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.ruby.rails/25445

I’ve also searched the Rails Trac bugs database, and can’t find anything
about
this problem.

I’m enforcing the format of the email address using…

validates_format_of :email_address,
:with => /^([^@\s]+)@((?:[-a-z0-9]+.)+[a-z]{2,})$/,
:message => “is not valid”,
:if => Proc.new {|model| !model.email_address.blank?}

…which combined with my other validations surely should (and did for a
long
time) take care of all possible scenarios with the email addresses.
Meaning:

  • Neither field present.
  • Email address present, confirmation not.
  • Confirmation present, email address not.
  • Both present, don’t match.
  • Both present, match, but format is not an email address.
  • Both present, match, format is an email address.

So something is seriously amiss here, and I don’t know what it is, but
this
used to work fine, and it’s just stopped working.

Anyone else? Thanks for your help!

Cheers,

~Dave

–

Dave S.
Rent-A-Monkey Website Development

PGP Key: http://www.rentamonkey.com/pgpkey.asc

2

Hi Dave,

There was a posting on 1/20/06 by Adam D. reporting a similar
problem
with password confirmation. He didn’t get any replies.

Best regards,
Bill

----- Original Message -----
From: “Dave S.” [email protected]
To: “Ruby On Rails” [email protected]
Sent: 2006-03-14 6:14 AM
Subject: [Rails] validates_confirmation_of has stopped working

Hi Railers,

I’m past considering myself a noob in Rails land - I think what I’m up
against
here is more of a bug or an anomaly that I’m unaware of (or that has
changed
in a recent version).

I had a fully working validates_confirmation_of :email_address field in my
app

  • was one of the first things I set up, extremely simple, been working for
    a
    long time.

Then one day I notice that it’s not working any more - the validator
basically
doesn’t care if you fill in the email_address field but not
email_address_confirmation, and it certainly doesn’t care if they don’t
match.

I’ve tried looking at the examples again, and my code follows them to the
letter (with the exception that my field name is different). I’ve checked
the
logs and the appropriate parameters are being sent through.

In desperation, I even tried validates_presence_of
:email_address_confirmation
to ensure that it’s filled in - that works to enforce the field in the
form,
yet the confirmation check still doesn’t seem to take place.

It was my belief (and this certainly worked fine exactly like this for a
long
time) that if I had…

validates_presence_of :email_address
validates_confirmation_of :email_address

… that would take care of enforcing that both fields are filled in and
match
each other.

I haven’t changed anything on this code, yet it’s stopped doing the
confirmation validation.

Could anyone else confirm this is/isn’t the case? I’m running Rails 1.0.0
and
Ruby 1.8.4.

This thread appears to be discussing a similar problem, but it’s not quite
the
same: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.ruby.rails/25445

I’ve also searched the Rails Trac bugs database, and can’t find anything
about
this problem.

I’m enforcing the format of the email address using…

validates_format_of :email_address,
:with => /^([^@\s]+)@((?:[-a-z0-9]+.)+[a-z]{2,})$/,
:message => “is not valid”,
:if => Proc.new {|model| !model.email_address.blank?}

…which combined with my other validations surely should (and did for a
long
time) take care of all possible scenarios with the email addresses.
Meaning:

  • Neither field present.
  • Email address present, confirmation not.
  • Confirmation present, email address not.
  • Both present, don’t match.
  • Both present, match, but format is not an email address.
  • Both present, match, format is an email address.

So something is seriously amiss here, and I don’t know what it is, but
this

3

On Tuesday 14 Mar 2006 12:56, Bill W. wrote:

There was a posting on 1/20/06 by Adam D. reporting a similar
problem with password confirmation. He didn’t get any replies.

Cheers Bill - on list as well as off list! I’ve emailed Adam but no
reply
yet. I’m wondering if it’s this bug…

http://dev.rubyonrails.org/ticket/785

… though the description isn’t completely clear so I can’t be sure.

The thing I can’t understand is that this WAS working perfectly, and
that as
far as I know I haven’t changed anything with it except keeping my Rails
version up to date with the current gem version.

Anyone got any good alternative suggestions for a way to homebrew a
confirmation field using custom validators? I’m guessing it shouldn’t
be too
hard to do, but I only want to do that as a last resort, since really
I’d
rather it happened using the official built-in way of doing it if
possible.

It’s just, I really need this feature to work properly again - and soon!
:-S

~Dave

–

Dave S.
Rent-A-Monkey Website Development

PGP Key: http://www.rentamonkey.com/pgpkey.asc

4

I have also recently (well its the first time I have wanted to use
validates_confirmation_of) been having problems with this particular
validation method.

Looking at the script/console I would say that the model just isnt
accepting the confirmation attribute at all. Are we required to add an
attr_accessor or other attr notification to the model in order to use
this validation mechanism?

5

On Tuesday 14 Mar 2006 12:14, Dave S. wrote:

I had a fully working validates_confirmation_of :email_address field in my
app - was one of the first things I set up, extremely simple, been working
for a long time.

Then one day I notice that it’s not working any more - the validator
basically doesn’t care if you fill in the email_address field but not
email_address_confirmation, and it certainly doesn’t care if they don’t
match.

Sorry to resurrect an extinct thread and reply to myself, but following
on
from my original message that you can read in full at:

http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/57951#47432

I’ve finally figured out what wasn’t working, and why my
validates_confirmation_of had stopped caring.

In my app, it’s a multi-stage form, where I’m saving things to the
session,
but also re-loading stuff from previous values in order to preserve
fields
even where the record isn’t saved. Basically, a system that allows you
to
jump about between different stages of the process and remembers things
whatever you do, validating at each stage but only saving to the
database
right at the end.

Anyway… so what I was doing was storing the values in my session,
recalling
and combining them with new values when the form was submitted to build
up
the full amount of info required.

When saving the object to the session, all the true fields (those of the
database table) get saved fine, but the confirmation virtual field is
not
saved, so at the point I recall previous data and create a new combined
object, that foo_confirmation field is actually reset to nil.

I’m still not 100% sure of the exact way or position it’s breaking it,
but the
remedy has been to copy in the foo_confirmation field from the params if
it’s
set. Rather like this:

if params[:blah][:foo_confirmation]
@blah.foo_confirmation = params[:blah][:foo_confirmation]
end

Now my validators work properly. Thought I’d just post a follow-up, in
case
anybody else ever finds themselves in this arrgh-hair-tearing-out
scenario.

I don’t think it’s a bug as such, probably just a side-effect of
storing,
recalling and combining values using the session like this. (Since my
system
preserves all input - even invalid or incomplete input.)

In hindsight, there may have been a more efficient way to do what I’ve
had to
do, but as this was my first non-trivial Rails project (and although
I’ve got
quite a few Rails sites done now, this one is still ongoing because it’s
very
non-trivial!) I’ve picked up a lot more tricks since back when I was
planning
this.

Anyway, here’s hoping that my follow-up helps someone else in the same
situation at some point.

Cheers,

~Dave

–

Dave S.
Rent-A-Monkey Website Development

PGP Key: http://www.rentamonkey.com/pgpkey.asc