Set empty values as null in the database

Rails
1

Le’s say that I have a table called people and the column middle_name is
nullable. If the user enters say blank or empty space then in the
database
it is recorded as empty space. I would like in all my models all empty
spaces to be recorded as null.

I guess I can write a plugin which will do so for all the models but I’m
sure something like that should already be existing.I checked but
couldn’t
find anything. Anyone knows any plugin which might be of help.

Thanks
-=-

2

On 11/17/06, Neeraj K. [email protected] wrote:

-=-

I think you should be able to use a before_save hook in you person
model to change empty strings to nil… or do it application wide with
an extention to AR.

class ActiveRecord::Base

def before_save
attributes.each { |key, value| write_attribute(key, nil) if
value.is_a?(String) && value.blank? }
end

end

Hope this helps.

–
Zack C.
http://depixelate.com

3

Neeraj K. wrote:

Le’s say that I have a table called people and the column middle_name is
nullable. If the user enters say blank or empty space then in the
database it is recorded as empty space. I would like in all my models
all empty spaces to be recorded as null.

WhitespaceKiller does this

http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/HowToStripWhitespaceFromModelFields

–
We develop, watch us RoR, in numbers too big to ignore.

4

I’m still learning ruby and my question is:

If a model is using before_save method in the fashion you have
illustrated
then this before_save method would be overriden by the before_save
method of
the model and empty string will be persisted.

-=-

5

On 11/17/06, Neeraj K. [email protected] wrote:

find anything. Anyone knows any plugin which might be of help.

–
Zack C.
http://depixelate.com

Neeraj,

That is true - but the model can also simply call super() from the
before_save() to keep this functionality.

There are also a bunch of callbacks you can choose from:
http://caboo.se/doc/classes/ActiveRecord/Callbacks.html

–
Zack C.
http://depixelate.com