Conditional Validation

Conditional Validation allows controllers to communicate with models about whether or not certain validations should be run. This is great for multi-page wizards and context-dependent validations.

Compatibility

Tested with:

• Ruby: MRI 2.0.0
• Rails: 4.0.1

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem "conditional_validation"

And then execute:

bundle

Usage

First, define a validation accessor:

# app/models/some_model.rb
class SomeModel
  validation_accessor :some_grouping_name
end

Then, this model will receive the following methods for conditional validation:

enable_some_grouping_name_validation # Enables conditional validation
disable_some_grouping_name_validation # Disables conditional validation
validate_on_some_grouping_name? # Check if conditional validation is enabled

A "Real World" Example

# app/models/user.rb
User < ActiveRecord::Base
  validation_accessor :address_attributes # Initialize conditional validation on address attributes

  with_options if: :validate_on_address_attributes? do |obj|
    obj.validates :street, presence: true
    obj.validates :city, presence: true
    # ...
  end
end

# app/controllers/user_controller.rb
def update
  current_user.enable_address_attributes_validation # Enable conditional validation on address attributes
  if current_user.save
    current_user.disable_address_attributes_validation # Not necessarily needed, but disables conditional validation on address attributes
    # ...
  end
end

Method Chaining

The enable and disable methods allow for method chaining so that multiple validation accessors may be enabled/disabled at once:

if current_user.enable_address_attributes_validation.enable_some_other_validation.save
  # ...
end

Author

• Paul Dobbins