aurels / vat_validator

Validator for european countries VAT numbers for ActiveModel

This project is really old and unmaintained. It's kept here for legacy reasons.

We advice you to use this one instead : https://github.com/yolk/valvat

Description

Use this plugin to validate VAT numbers for European countries.

Basic Usage

To validate a model field as a valid intracom VAT number :

validates :vat_number, :vat => true

It may be optional like this :

validates :vat_number, :vat => true, :allow_blank => true

If you want the VAT number's country to match another kind of country field, use the 'country_method' option :

validates :vat_number, :vat => { :country_method => :my_method }

where it is supposed that your model has a method named 'my_method' which returns the country ISO code you want to match. The available country codes available for Europa are: DE, AT, BE, BG, CY, DK, ES, EE, FI, FR, EL, HU, IE, IT, LV, LT, LU, MT, NL, PL, PT, GB, RO, SK, SI, SE and CZ.

Example :

class Invoice < ActiveRecord::Base validates :vat_number, :vat => { :country_method => :country_code }

# Logic to return the country code
def country_code
  case country.downcase
    when 'belgium' then 'BE'
    when 'france'  then 'FR'
    when 'sweden'  then 'SE'
    # ...
    else nil
  end
end

end

Validating the Number at VIES

It's also possible to have the VAT number validated against Europa's VIES webservice. Simply use the :vies option like this :

validates :vat_number, :vat => { :vies => true }

Keep in mind that the webservice might be offline at some time for some countries. Check the VIES FAQ for more information about that.

Installation

In your project's Gemfile :

gem 'vat_validator'

= Tests

If you want to run the specs :

rake spec

Credits

This plugin in released under MIT license by Aurélien Malisart (see MIT-LICENSE file).

(c) http://aurelien.malisart.be

vat_validator's Issues

module causing issues in Rails 3.0.x app

I have an old app which uses Rails 3.0.7 and the latest gem release (1.2) isn't loading in the app:

/Users/jeroen/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.8.7-p370@manchild/gems/activemodel-3.0.7/lib/active_model/validations/with.rb:70:in `validates_with': undefined method `new' for VatValidator:Module (NoMethodError)

A little digging seems to point out that the VatValidator module (and the include) are causing the error:

ActiveModel::Validations.__send__(:include, VatValidator)

A quick fix for me was to remove that line and move both the VatValidator and VatNumber classes out of the VatValidator module. Doing it like that the validator would load as expected.

I did not have the time yet to look further into it.