Stuck on a validates_presence_of unless issue

Rails
1

i have a person object. Persons don’t need to have addresses, but if
they have any address field value, they must have them all. So I have
something like this:

validates_presence_of :street_address, :city, :state, :postal_code
unless :address_blank?

address_blank? checks whether all of the address fields are blank.

If I run a test like this, it works:

describe “given attributes” do
before(:each) do
@valid_attributes = {
:first_name => “Jonny”,
:middle_name => “D”,
:last_name => “Miller”,
:street_address => “123 This Street”,
:street_address2 => “Suite 200”,
:city => “Baltimore”,
:state => “MD”,
:postal_code => “23993”,
:salutation => “Mr.”,
:home_phone => “373-333-9999”,
:cell_phone => “373-444-5555”
}
end
it “given attributes containing valid address values,
address_blank? should return false” do
it = Person.new(@valid_attributes)
it.address_blank?.should == false
end

However, if I do the following,

it “must have a street_address” do
@valid_attributes[:street_address] = “”
it = Person.new(@valid_attributes)
it.save
it.errors.on(:street_address).should == “can’t be blank”
end

I get the following result.

‘Person must have a street_address’ FAILED
expected: “can’t be blank”,
got: nil (using ==)

So it appears that :address_blank? in the validates_presence_of is
evaluating to true.

Can anyone give me an idea of how I can detect why this is so?

I apologize in advance if this should be an rspec question, and will
take it there if advised as such.

best,
Tom

2

On Sat, Nov 1, 2008 at 5:29 AM, hoenth [email protected] wrote:

i have a person object. Persons don’t need to have addresses, but if
they have any address field value, they must have them all. So I have
something like this:

validates_presence_of :street_address, :city, :state, :postal_code
unless :address_blank?

Instead of

unless :address_blank?

use

:unless => :address_blank?

since you need to pass options to validates_presence_of as opposed to
writing a normal conditional. See the API docs for validates_presence_of
for
more details if you need them.

Regards,
Craig

3

I must have looked at those API docs 10 times and didn’t see it. Would
have bitten…and all that.

Thanks for the quick response Craig. Worked like a charm.
Tom