error_message_on etc. removed - what's the rationale?

I have searched the web high and low but could not find anything so I find myself forced to ask here - could so. pls. provide a link to some discussion or blog post that explains the rationale behind removing those helpers? What am I to do instead?

I have no plans to complain at all, I'm merely interested in the background of this decision, since I believe it's a little more far- reaching than one might think from this one innocent commit :slight_smile:

If you are talking about view helpers that generate HTML for forms and validation errors, to me it’s pretty obvious why they were removed: they were like dynamic scaffold in old versions of rails — one magic method, lots of magic output, no way to easily see and customize what’s going on. You could be using these methods for a limited time, but if you at one point decided you want something slighty more different, you’d have to ditch these helpers and recreate the complete HTML yourself, which could lead to frustration (small change => lots of work => sad face).

Generators are much better. The code is right in front of you, it teaches you, you can edit it or remove it with one swift keystroke. I’m not sure if the functionality removed recently is available in generator form, though. No big loss if it isn’t.

I was also asking because I don't seem to have any error messages on the model object right now... (didn't verify it by checking rails code yet, busy with other stuff)

I have found this ticket which explains some of it, I consider my question answered :slight_smile: #1484 Deprecate error_messages_for - Ruby on Rails - rails

I take back what I said, everything is okay.

To clarify: this is the commit I had in mind

“Remove input, form, error_messages_for and error_message_on from the framework.”

http://github.com/rails/rails/commit/cd79a4617421f1b66e905f5da84ff28004e2bedd