Other validations fail even if there is no validates_presence_of

rubyonrails-talk
1

Hi,

I have a set of validations like: validates_format_of :city,                        :with => /^[a-zA-Z\s\'\&]+$/,                        :message => "is not a valid name"

  validates_format_of :zip,                       :with => /^[\d]{5}+$/,                       :allow_nil => true,                       :message => "is not a valid zip code"

But I don't have a validates_presence_of :city, :zip.

I want to validate the format only if user has entered some value into the fields. But both the _format_of hooks are trying to validate an empty value. Any idea how I can stop this behavior?

Thanks.

2

Add :allow_nil => true to the city validation. You only have it on the zip code validation.

-Bill

Love AJAX wrote:

3

:allow_nil => true didn't work on these validations. Instead I had to do something like :if => Proc.new{|profile| profile != ""}. This works fine. So my code now looks like this:

  validates_format_of :zip,                       :with => /^[\d]{5}+$/,                       :if => Proc.new {|profile| profile.zip != ""},                       :message => "is not a valid zip code"

validates_format_of :city,                        :with => /^[a-zA-Z\s\'\&]+$/,                        :if => Proc.new {|profile| profile.city != ""},                        :message => "is not a valid name"

See the last sentence of http://api.rubyonrails.com/classes/ActiveRecord/Validations/ClassMethods.html#M000958.

Thanks much.