Hi all,
As usual, you’ve all been very helpful in the past and I thank you for
continuing to help myself and others.
Today I have the following code/database architecture question which I
would like you guys to help me out with.
Children Table (user has_many children)
…
is_lost boolean, default => false
is_found boolean, default => false
…
Basically, a child is “safe” if he is not flagged as lost or found (so a
child has 3 possible states: safe, lost, found).
I created a custom validation to avoid a child from being both lost AND
found with this:
def validate
if is_lost? and is_found?
errors.add_to_base("A child can't be lost <i>AND</i> found at the
same time!")
end
end
This all works great and validates correctly. HOWEVER, the only way I’ve
been able to select if a child is lost or found is through check boxes
(not the best way to do this). I think a drop down box would be the
better solution to select if a child is either lost or found (or safe)
My question is this:
Is this the best way to achieve what I am trying to do? Is it better to
just have a column in my table named “status” where the values would be
either Safe, Lost, Found and remove the is_lost and is_found boolean
columns instead?
If the current way I designed it is good, how can I create a drop down
box that could handle both the is_lost and is_found data?
I know this is a disaster (in my eyes) but I would like the opinions and
suggestions of you experienced folks.
Thank you!!!
-Tony
P.S. Let me know if you need more info or code to help you understand
this.