SchemaValidations

SchemaValidations is an ActiveRecord extension that keeps your model class definitions simpler and more DRY, by automatically defining validations based on the database schema.

Overview

One of the great things about Rails (ActiveRecord, in particular) is that it inspects the database and automatically defines accessors for all your columns, keeping your model class definitions simple and DRY. That's great for simple data columns, but where it falls down is when your table contains constraints.

create_table :users do |t|
  t.string :email, :null => false, :limit => 30
  t.boolean :confirmed, :null => false
end

In that case :null => false, :limit => 30 and :boolean must be covered on the model level.

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  validates :email, :presence => true, :length => { :maximum => 30 }
  validates :confirmed, :presence => true, :inclusion => { :in => [true, false] }
end

...which isn't the most DRY approach.

SchemaValidations aims to cover that and does boring work for you. It inspect the database and automatically creates validations basing on the schema. After installing it your model is as simple as it can be.

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
end

Validations are there but they are created by schema_validations under the hood.

Compatibility

As of version 1.2.0, SchemaValidations supports and is tested on:

• ruby 2.1.5 with activerecord 4.2.1, using mysql2, postgresql or sqlite3

Earlier versions of SchemaValidations supported:

• rails 3.2, 4.1, and 4.2.0
• MRI ruby 1.9.3 and 2.1.5

Installation

Simply add schema_validations to your Gemfile.

gem "schema_validations"

What if I want something special?

SchemaValidations is highly customizable. You can configure behavior globally via SchemaValidations.setup or per-model via SchemaValidations::ActiveRecord::schema_validations, such as:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  schema_validations :except => :email
  validates :email, :presence => true, :length => { :in => 5..30 }
end

See SchemaValidations::Config for the available options.

This seems cool, but I'm worried about too much automagic

You can globally turn off automatic creation in config/initializers/schema_validations.rb:

SchemaValidations.setup do |config|
  config.auto_create = false
end

Then in any model where you want automatic validations, just do

class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
  schema_validations
end

You can also pass options as per above.

Which validations are covered?

Constraints:

Constraint	Validation
:null => false	validates ... :presence => true
:limit => 100	validates ... :length => { :maximum => 100 }
:unique => true	validates ... :uniqueness => true

Data types:

Type	Validation
:boolean	:validates ... :inclusion => { :in => [true, false] }
:float	:validates ... :numericality => true
:integer	:validates ... :numericality => { :only_integer => true, :greater_than_or_equal_to => ..., :less_than => ... }

How do I know what it did?

If you're curious (or dubious) about what validations SchemaValidations defines, you can check the log file. For every assocation that SchemaValidations defines, it generates an info entry such as

[schema_validations] Article.validates_length_of :title, :allow_nil=>true, :maximum=>50

which shows the exact validation definition call.

SchemaValidations defines the validations lazily for each class, only creating them when they are needed (to validate a record of the class, or in response to introspection on the class). So you may need to search through the log file for "schema_validations" to find all the validations, and some classes' validations may not be defined at all if they were never needed for the logged use case.

Release Notes

1.3.0

• Add range checks to integer validations. Thanks to @lowjoel

1.2.0

• No longer pull in schema_plus's auto-foreign key behavior. Limited to AR >= 4.2.1

1.1.0

• Works with Rails 4.2.

1.0.1

• Fix enums in Rails 4.1. Thanks to @lowjoel

1.0.0

• Works with Rails 4.0. Thanks to @davll
• No longer support Rails < 3.2 or Ruby < 1.9.3

0.2.2

• Rails 2.3 compatibility (check for Rails::Railties symbol). thanks to https://github.com/thehappycoder

0.2.0

• New feature: ActiveRecord#validators and ActiveRecord#validators_on now ensure schema_validations are loaded

History

• SchemaValidations is derived from the "Red Hill On Rails" plugin schema_validations originally created by harukizaemon (https://github.com/harukizaemon)

• SchemaValidations was created in 2011 by Michał Łomnicki and Ronen Barzel

Testing

Are you interested in contributing to schema_validations? Thanks! Please follow the standard protocol: fork, feature branch, develop, push, and issue pull request.

Some things to know about to help you develop and test:

• schema_dev: SchemaValidations uses schema_dev to facilitate running rspec tests on the matrix of ruby, activerecord, and database versions that the gem supports, both locally and on travis-ci

To to run rspec locally on the full matrix, do:

    $ schema_dev bundle install
    $ schema_dev rspec

You can also run on just one configuration at a time; For info, see schema_dev --help or the schema_dev README.

The matrix of configurations is specified in schema_dev.yml in the project root.

Code coverage results will be in coverage/index.html -- it should be at 100% coverage.

License

This gem is released under the MIT license.