learn-co-curriculum / activerecord-validations-readme Goto Github PK

At the bottom of the ActiveRecord Validations readme there is an example defining a custom validation. If there is an error in the description it says you should push an error message into record.errors[:attribute] e.g. record.errors[:email] but directly below that there is the text "The result of these steps should be the following:"

 class EmailValidator < ActiveModel::Validator
   def validate(record)
     unless record.email.match?(/flatironschool.com/)
       record.errors[:name] << "We're only allowed to have people who work for the 
 company in the database!"
     end
   end
end

--
In this example on line 4 it references record.errors[:name] not record.errors[:email]

The Custom Validators section is confusingly written. The linked Rails guide is a much better resource.

This portion of the lesson is not well-explained and really should be it's own lesson. Also, consider only teaching #validate for custom validations.

"We can use ActiveRecord::Base class methods like #validates to set things up."

#validates is not a class method. I think it meant to say,

"We can use ActiveRecord::Base instance methods like #validates available to our classes to set things up."

Apologies if this is not the right forum/form to make this comment in, but I think the section on custom validations needs a little more meat on the bones. Maybe a few examples? I realize the curriculum's huge and this is probably a minor sub-topic, but I definitely don't understand when to use each custom validator option or even where to build the class for a custom validator (in a separate .rb file in the models folder??). I was able to get through the subsequent lab through trial & error, but I think a little more explanation would be really helpful here! Also, I of course used the http://guides.rubyonrails.org/active_record_validations.html site, but I didn't find their explanation any more helpful than what we have here. Thanks!

"If your validation needs become more complex, consult the documentation."

...needs TO become more complex