not saving to database (save unless)

rubyonrails-talk
1

Hi, I have a very beginners understanding of rails and ruby and I keep getting stuck. Some previous posts have helped me a great deal but I now have a different issue and so I thought I should start another post with a different topic.

I am making an appointment booking app and I have a very basic design. I have created an appointments scaffold with name:string phone:string email:string numpeople:integer date:date timeslot:string. On the view for creating a new appointment I have stated that appointment 1 is 9-11am, appointment 2 is 12-2pm, appointment 3 is 3-5pm and appointment 4 is 5 - 7pm. The user is asked to enter 1,2,3 or 4.

When the user clicks on "make appointment" I'm trying to interrupt the appointments controller (create method) so that I can check if the date && timeslot are nil. if that is the case, the system should continue on to create the appointment, if not then I want to redirect to somewhere else. I have created a method called isValid? in the model (See below)

I think the method is correct as the system is getting as far as the redirect. The problem is, it keeps redirecting to the page I told it to go to if it's not saved(the homepage or root_path). (Also the appointments are not saving).

So, there now seems to be an issue with saving the appointment data to the database.

If anyone could give me some pointers, I would be so, so grateful!

CODE:

appointments Model: class Appointment < ActiveRecord::Base

  def isValid?     taken= Appointment.where("date = ? && timeslot = ?", date,timeslot)      Appointment.save unless taken   end end

appointments controller:

def create     valid = @appointment = Appointment.new(appointment_params).isValid?

      respond_to do |format|       if valid         format.html { redirect_to new_appointment_path, notice: 'Appointment was successfully created.' }         format.json { render :show, status: :created, location: @appointment }       else         format.html { redirect_to root_path, notice: 'That appointment is not available, please choose again' } # this redirect works with no notice         format.js { render json: @appointment.errors, status: :unprocessable_entity }       end     end   end

2

You should probably be using rails validations for this, most of the work will then be done for you by rails. I suggest that you work right through a good tutorial such as railstutorial.org, which will show you the basics of rails and save both yourself and us a lot of time in the long run. To get a flavour of validations you can look at the Rails Guide on ActiveRecord Validations.

Colin

3

I think I understand what you want now, this is a clean up of what you did but I dont think is what you want

def create

@appointment = Appointment.where(“date = ? && timeslot = ?”, date,timeslot).first_or_initialize

respond_to do |format|

if @appointment.new_record? # this means you did NOT found an Appointment for the given date and timeslot

format.html { redirect_to new_appointment_path, notice:

‘Appointment was successfully created.’ }

format.json { render :show, status: :created, location:

@appointment }

else # this means you did found an Appointment for the given date and timeslot

format.html { redirect_to root_path, notice: 'That appointment

is not available, please choose again’ } # this redirect works with no

notice

format.js { render json: @appointment.errors, status:

:unprocessable_entity }

end

end

end

now keep in mind that you are doing it wrong, ‘create action’ it for creating, what you need is

a contitional link that leads to either new or index action and leave create alone doing only what

it should. So can you explain your goal as a user story, so that I can guide you to do it properly ?

4

Hi rbritom, I really appreciate your help on this!

I guess my goal (as a user story) is:

I want to be able to make an appointment that has not already been made. I don't want to have double (or worse!) booked appointments. I want to be able to check the appointments table and make the booking if that date and timeslot has not been taken already. If it has, I want the system to save my appointment and display a notice to me to say that the booking was made successfully. If the date and time selected are not available then I want it to tell me it's not available and to try again.

When I get that working, I want to add an action_mailer to send the customer an email with the booking details, and I also want it send me an email with the booking details.

5

I'm actually still a little confused..

Where is the save? As my save unless taken in the model doesn't work

6

This solution gives an error: undefined local variable or method `date' for #<AppointmentsController:

@appointment = Appointment.where("date = ? && timeslot = ?", date, timeslot).first_or_initialize

Basically, I want to not create double appointments for the same date and time, and I want to save them if they're not double bookings.

There must be an easier way??

7

There is - take Colin's advice about working through a tutorial and learn, for this use case at least, about ActiveRecord validations...

8

thanks, ill send you back an answer in a bit, ill try to add as much comments are possible

9

I have omitted some of the code for brevity

controller

class AppointmentsController < ApplicationController

def index

@appointments = Appointment.all

end

def new

@appointment = Appointment.find(params[:id])

end

def create

@appointment = Appointment.new(appointment_params)

respond_to do |format|

if @appointment.save # here is your save

format.html { redirect_to appointments_path, notice: ‘Appointment created successfuly’ }

format.js {…} # put your code here

else

format.html { render :new }

format.js {…}

end

end

end

rest of your code below

end

Model

class Appointment < ActiveRecord::Base

this is what the guys meant by “move this to active record validation”

validates :date, uniqueness: { scope: :timeslot } # this will return a validation error if an appointment exist with the same date and timeslot

end

Now in the view, the index page should have a table with dates and timeslots have a look at this railscast to learn how to do that, but note that the railscast it pretty old, http://railscasts.com/episodes/213-calendars, still it will help you to create a calendar, im pretty sure there is also a gem that can do it for you, but if you are learning the railscast will help you a lot. Then there, there should be create appointment link inside the free times slot, and then the appointment title in the timeslots that are already in use, its all most about the presentation of the index and the calendar, there not much logic inside create action besides what I have posted here. Dont be afraid to keep asking, and go into railscast and browse around there are some pretty good ones there that can help you learn the basics easily.

http://railscasts.com/

10

Thank you very much! I am now reading about Active Record Validations and it's making a lot more sense to me and your solution also makes sense to me now. I am learning! I really appreciate your help.