Beginning find / validation questions

rubyonrails-talk
1

I've been toying over these two problems, but I'm hoping that someone here might be able to provide a better idea.

1. Every user has their own id (current_user.id) and can add people to a list with firstname and lastname fields. I understand that validates_uniqueness_of with :scope should be able to compare at least one of the fields, but can this validation be done against the combined first and last name together?

2. Does anyone have a better reference for structuring conditions within finds? Specifically, I'm trying to figure out how to adjust this query to find matches between either lastname AND email or lastname and phone (@contact.phone)

User.find(:first, :conditions => ["lastname = ? AND email = ?", @contact.lastname, @contact.email])

If anyone could lend a hand, I'd really appreciate it. Sorry if these questions are a bit basic, as well.

2

I've been toying over these two problems, but I'm hoping that someone here might be able to provide a better idea.

1. Every user has their own id (current_user.id) and can add people to a list with firstname and lastname fields. I understand that validates_uniqueness_of with :scope should be able to compare at least one of the fields, but can this validation be done against the combined first and last name together?

Not using validates_uniqueness_of. You can however write your own validation function using validates_each. See: http://api.rubyonrails.com/classes/ActiveRecord/Validations/ClassMethods.html#M001045

2. Does anyone have a better reference for structuring conditions within finds? Specifically, I'm trying to figure out how to adjust this query to find matches between either lastname AND email or lastname and phone (@contact.phone)

User.find(:first, :conditions => ["lastname = ? AND email = ?", @contact.lastname, @contact.email])

You can just use a standard sql where fragment:

User.find(:first, :conditions => ["(lastname = ? AND email = ?) OR (lastname = ? and phone = ?)", @contact.lastname, @contact.email, @contact.lastname, @contact.phone])

3

For #2, something like this should work:

class User   def self.find_by_lastname_etc(lastname, firstname = nil, email = nil)     where_string = "lastname = :lname"     if !firstname.nil?       where_string += " AND firstname = :fname"     end     if !email.nil?       where_string += " AND email = :em"     end     self.find(where_string, {:lname => lastname, :fname => firstname, :em => email})   end end

Cheers,

-Roy