Validate_presence_of strange behaviour

Rails
1

Folks,

I need some help to understand some strange behaviour when using
validates_presence_of

I have a form that updates table row. One field is text and I require it
to be completed.

With no validation in place in the model I can obvioulsy update the row
and either put a text entry in or leave it blank and the update happens
okay.

After adding validate_presence_of :activity to the model …
I then update with the text item completed and it updates okay.
but if I then update with the text item null I get what appears to be a
totally unrelated error:-

“Called id for nil, which would mistakenly be 4 – if you really wanted
the id of nil, use object_id” and which points to the code line:-

Of course what I would expect is to get an “Activity must be completed”
error.

So when I would expect validate_presence_of to trigger a real validation
error it in fact throws up this other condition.

I suspect the actual error may be unrelated to validate_presence_of but
that the validate routine is merely exposing some other underlying issue
and without the validation in place it all works okay and I dont have
any issues or errors shown!

Confused since the validate_presence_of should be so simple and yet it
throws up this other condition.

Can anyone give me a steer as to what/where I should be investigating
this.

Any help much appreciated!

2

You get an error in this line

That has nothing to do with the validation as such.
You try to get @activities.id which will fail with the error you
mentioned if it’s nil
So the problem is wherever you do
@activities = …

Why this doesn’t fail without the validation is another question

By the way:
You use activities here, which is plural and should contain a list
rather then an object.
For easy code reading it would be better to be clear about that
point and either use @activity if it’s a singular object or your
code is wrong to try to get an id from it
(But can’t say that for sure without the rest of your code)