Check if ActiveRecord object is valid with params before updating to Database

To update the attributes without saving them, you can use

@obj.assign_attributes( params[:obj] )

Then to check if the object is valid, you can call

@obj.valid?

If the object is not valid, you can see the errors (only after calling .valid?) by calling

@obj.errors

If the object is valid, you can save it by calling

@obj.save

However, all of this usually isn't necessary. If the object isn't valid, then ActiveRecord won't save the object to the database, so all of the attribute changes are forgotten when you leave the controller action.

Also, since an invalid record won't be saved to the database, you can always just call Object.find() again to get the original object back.

Adding Password Complexity Validations To Devise

Here we have a typical Devise user model. What’s new is the password complexity validation.

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  devise :database_authenticatable, :registerable, :recoverable, :rememberable, :trackable, :validatable
  attr_accessible :email, :password, :password_confirmation, :remember_me,

  validate :password_complexity

  def password_complexity
    if password.present? and not password.match(/^(?=.*[a-z])(?=.*[A-Z])(?=.*\d). /)
      errors.add :password, "must include at least one lowercase letter, one uppercase letter, and one digit"
    end
  end
end

Use Belongs_to With Presence Validator

Assume we have two models: User and Image. User has one image and image belongs to user. The code below:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_one :image
end

class Image < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :user
end

Now we want to add validation for image to check if user is there or not.

class Image < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :user
  validates :user, :presence => true
end

So by adding just one line whenever you are trying to save image object, it will fire a query with respect to the user_id to check weather that user exists or not. In case user doesn’t exits “image.save” with return an error.