Help with validation

Rails
1

I am trying to write some simple code post a form, update the database
and do some validation. I have 2 problems:

  1. The validation fails but I can’t get hold of the error message
  2. I can’t get the form to redisplay the previously entered data for the
    user to correct.

I have 2 controllers:

user and holiday.

A user can request a new holiday by filling in a form. I have a
request_holiday method in the user controller. My request_holiday.rhtml
sets up a form as follows:

<%= start_form_tag :controller => ‘holiday’, :action => ‘new’ %>

My holiday controller new method does the following:

def new
		@holiday = Holiday.new(@params[:holiday])
		if @holiday.save
			flash[:notice] = "Holiday requested."
			redirect_to(:action => "list")
		else
			flash[:notice] = "Failed."
			redirect_to(:controller => 'user', :action => "request_holiday")
		end
end

In my holiday model, I check that the dates have been entered sensibly:

def validate
		if date_start > date_end
			errors.add_to_base("From date cannot be greater than to date")
		end
end

I know the validation works because I can get the ‘Failed’ flash notice,
but I can’t seem to get the error message using
error_message_for(:holiday) in the page.

I also can’t seem to get the data to repopulate the form. I normally
access the data in the controller using @params[:holiday] as the params
go into a hash called holiday in the params hash, but when they get
passed back to my form, they don’t live in the holiday hash anymore and
are just normal parameters, e.g

http://localhost:3000/user/request_holiday?date_start%283i%29=15&holiday_type_id=1&date_end%281i%29=2006&date_end%282i%29=2&user_id=&date_end%283i%29=15&date_start%281i%29=2006&approval_id=1&comment=&date_start%282i%29=5

My form uses tags such as

<%= date_select("holiday", "date_end", :order => [:day, :month, :year]) %>

I’m new to all this say maybe doing it completely wrong, can anyone
help/correct me?

Thanks

2

I hope someone answers you Mat! I’ve asked a similar question twice and
have seen someone
else post a similar question twice. The Agile book just doesn’t seem to
give enough to go
on… where are the error messages stored? How does one access them?
Especially, if I have
a child object whose validate method has failed and prevented the save
of the parent,
where is /that/ error message?

b