Email Uniqueness and Updating data and information

rubyonrails-talk
1

Hi,

I have created a company model with the one validation for email defined like this:

validates :email, presence: true, format: { with: URI::MailTo::EMAIL_REGEXP }, uniqueness: true, unless: → { self.persisted? && self.email == email_was }

Then in the controller I have defined the update method something like this:

def update @company.skip_email_uniqueness_validation = true if @company.update(company_params) redirect_to @company, notice: ‘Company was successfully updated.’

else
    render :edit 
end 
@company.skip_email_uniqueness_validation = false

end

private def company_params params.require(:company).permit(:name, :owner, :address, :email, :avatar, :documents, :admin_id) end

Now when I try to update profile for the company without changing the email address, it throws an error that email already exists and does not allow me to update it, but when I remove the uniqueness requirement from the model the data gets updated.

Kindly please help me with the workaround for this issue.

Regards, Asim Khan

2

Try separating out your validators into two different ones, like this:

class Company < ApplicationRecord
  validates :email, presence: true, format: { with: URI::MailTo::EMAIL_REGEXP }
  validates :email, uniqueness: true, unless: -> { self.persisted? && !email_changed? }
end

Note that !email_changed? is functionally the same thing as self.email == email_was.

(EDIT: :id not needed in the params hash.)

3

Thanks, I will try that out and update you on that.

P.S. For the company params, is passing in the id necessary?

Regards, Asim Khan

4

Hehe, you’re right about :id! Silly me. I had just quickly set up your example using The Brick in order to test it out, and then had copied over the params hash it auto-builds.

Based on this have put out a commit to exclude :id in the root part of the params hash.

Have fun with Rails!

1 Like
5

Hi, I tried your approach and made changes to the model and separated the 2 validators. The issue with email still exists, but when I comment out the uniqueness the changes did not get updated, rather it shows 2 records one with the old values and a new one with the newer values. It seems that it does not update the data but rather creates a new data instead.

Regards, Asim Khan

The model: class Company < ApplicationRecord belongs_to :admin

	has_many_attached :documents 
	has_one_attached :avatar
	validates :name, presence: true 
	validates :email, presence: true, format: { with: URI::MailTo::EMAIL_REGEXP }
	#validates :email, uniqueness: true, unless: -> { self.persisted? && !email.changed? }
end

The controller: def update @company.errors.delete(:email) #@company.skip_email_uniqueness_validation = true if @company.update(company_params) redirect_to @company, notice: ‘Company was successfully updated.’

else
    render :edit 
end 
#@company.skip_email_uniqueness_validation = false

end

The params: def company_params params.require(:company).permit(:name, :owner, :address, :email, :avatar, :documents, :admin_id) end

6

Wow – over here I can’t get it to fail :smile:

Here’s a quick video showing building out the project from scratch.

If you’d like to try the same, in a new Rails project add this in your Gemfile:

gem 'brick'

and then bundle install, and after that here are the terminal commands that I had run:

bin/rails active_storage:install
bin/rails g migration CreateAdmins name
bin/rails g model Company name owner address email documents:attachments avatar:attachment admin:references

after this added your validators to company.rb:

  validates :name, presence: true
  validates :email, presence: true, format: { with: URI::MailTo::EMAIL_REGEXP }
  validates :email, uniqueness: true, unless: -> { self.persisted? && !email_changed? }

And then ran a rails s and everything worked.

Here’s the controller that Brick had auto-generated:

class ::CompanyController < ActionController::Base
  def index
    @companies = Company.order("id")
    @companies._brick_querying(params, brick_col_names: true)
  end
  def show
    find_company
  end
  def new
    @company = Company.new
  end
  def create
    @company = Company.create(company_params)
  end
  def edit
    find_company
  end
  def update
    find_company.update(company_params)
  end
  def destroy
    find_company.destroy
  end
private
  def find_company
    id = params[:id]&.split(/[\/,_]/)
    @company = Company.find(id.is_a?(Array) && id.length == 1 ? id.first : id)
  end
  def company_params
    params.require(:company).permit(:name, :owner, :address, :email, :admin_id, :created_at, :updated_at, :avatar, documents: [])
  end
end

Hopefully this is helpful!

7

I finally found a fix for the issue and it was a very simple fix and had to take a lot of effort to find it, which was a silly mistake on my part. First, I modified my company model like this

class Company < ApplicationRecord
	belongs_to :admin

	has_many_attached :documents 
	has_one_attached :avatar

	validates :name, presence: true 
	validates :email, presence: true, format: { with: URI::MailTo::EMAIL_REGEXP }, unless: :skip_email_uniqueness_validation?
	validates :email, uniqueness: true, unless: :skip_email_uniqueness_validation?

	attr_accessor :skip_email_uniqueness_validation

	def update_without_email_validation(params)
		self.skip_email_uniqueness_validation = true
		result = update(params)
		self.skip_email_uniqueness_validation = false
		result
	end

	private 

	def skip_email_uniqueness_validation? 
		skip_email_uniqueness_validation
	end 

end

Then for the controller method I modified it as follows

def update @company = Company.find(params[:id]) if @company.update_without_email_validation(company_params) redirect_to @company, notice: ‘Company was successfully updated.’

else
    render :edit 
end

end

private

Only allow a list of trusted parameters through.

def company_params params.require(:company).permit(:id, :name, :owner, :address, :email, :avatar, :documents, :admin_id) end

In the form.html.erb I modified the form from this

<%= form_with(model: @company, url: companies_path, method: :post) do |form| %>

to this

<%= form_with(model: @company) do |form| %>

Now the updation and addition works with ease. Thank you all for the support and help.

Regards, Asim Khan