How to Validate Uniqueness Of a Record within Date Range

rubyonrails-talk
1

I would like to validate the uniqueness of a record within a date range.

For example : I want a customer attached to a post office within a date range arrives(date) and departs (date).

So this is ok: customer1; postoffice1; Feb1(arrives);Mar1(departs) customer1; postoffice1; Mar2(arrives);Apr1(departs)

This however is NOT ok: customer1; postoffice1; Feb1(arrives);Mar1(departs) customer1; postoffice1; Jan1(arrives);Feb10(departs) [xxx overlapping dates xxx]

The validation clause for this would be?

? validates_uniqueness_of :customer_id, :scope => [:postoffice_id,:arrives,:departs], :message=>"This unit with this arrival date for this PSO already exists." ?

I dont think the above is right? How do I specify range within scope.

2

I don’t see a way for you to combine the high-level validations to do what you want. However, you can overwrite the validate method to do what you want.

class SomeModel < ActiveRecord::Base def validate #custom validation here end end

See http://www.railsbrain.com/api/edge/doc/index.html?a=C00000457&name=Validations , which shows an example Person model that uses the high-level validations and overwrites validate. It also shows how to add errors if your custom validation fails.

Regards, Craig