How To Validate Boolean Form Field

Rails
1

Hello all.

I’ve got the following in my model:

class Individual < ActiveRecord::Base
validates_presence_of :first_name, :last_name, :street, :city,
:state, :zip
validates_acceptance_of :AZ_resident, :message => “You must be an
Arizona resident.”
end

The AZ_resident field is present and defined as boolean (PostgreSQL
8.1), but validation will not occur. I’ve tried adding :accept => “TRUE”
and variations on the theme, to no avail.

So, what am I doing wrong? How do I validate a boolean form field? It
may be of use to know that my view is standard scaffold-generated stuff
at the moment.

Thanks,

-ELf

2

On 2/28/06, Matthew F. [email protected] wrote:

The AZ_resident field is present and defined as boolean (PostgreSQL
8.1), but validation will not occur. I’ve tried adding :accept => “TRUE”
and variations on the theme, to no avail.

So, what am I doing wrong? How do I validate a boolean form field? It
may be of use to know that my view is standard scaffold-generated stuff
at the moment.

Have you tried this?

def validate
errors.add(:AZ_resident, “You must be an Arizona resident”) if
AZ_resident = false
end

3

Have you tried this?

def validate
errors.add(:AZ_resident, “You must be an Arizona resident”) if
AZ_resident = false
end

After correcting syntax errors, I tried:

def validate
errors.add(:AZ_resident, “You must be an Arizona resident”) if
:AZ_resident == false
end

No difference. Forms with AZ_resident left FALSE are happily inserted
into the database; no errors raised.

But, moreover, what is wrong with my use of the validates_acceptance_of
method? According to the docs found @
http://rubyonrails.org/api/classes/ActiveRecord/Validations/ClassMethods.html,
I’m doing everything right.

Thanks folks,

-ELf

4

To be able to validate a field, it must be present.

Try…
validates_presence_of :first_name, :last_name, :street, :city,
:state, :zip, :AZ_resident

  • Nithin
5

Nithin R. wrote:

To be able to validate a field, it must be present.

Adding :AZ_resident to validates_presence_of throws a validation
exception no matter whether True or False is selected. It’s acting as
if there’s no value in the field.

Is this normal behavior for a Boolean form field?

Thanks,

-ELf

6

or even better…

validates_acceptance_of :toc, {:message => “You must accept this
before proceeding”, :allow_nil => false}

7

You got me curious about this, so I did some more investigating. It
seems that the behavior is broken, but you can fix it by doing
something like this:

class Individual < ActiveRecord::Base
validates_acceptance_of :toc, :message => “You must accept this
before proceeding”

def validate
errors.add(:toc, “You must accept this before proceeding”) if
self.toc.nil?
end
end

HTH