deferred until inspiration hits

Helpful error messages when active record objects fail validation (in tests)

Posted by Chris Roos Wed, 02 Aug 2006 13:47:00

I posted a while back about displaying the reasons for an active record model failing validation.

I knew the code was hacky and nasty but didn’t realise quite how bad until I noticed how simply (1 line) the same thing was implemented in Rails 1.1 (and above).

Although it’s only useful for people still on Rails 1.0, I made a quick plugin that backports this change. I don’t really want to put it in my subversion repository, so have just pasted the necessary code below.

# File init.rb
require File.dirname(__FILE__) + '/lib/record_invalid'
# File record_invalid.rb
module ActiveRecord

  class RecordInvalid < ActiveRecordError
    def initialize(record)
      @record = record
      super("Validation failed: #{@record.errors.full_messages.join(", ")}")
    end
  end

end

To create a plugin from this, create the following structure in your rails_app/vendor/plugins directory.

active_record_validation_error/
|
|--init.rb (copy contents of code above)
|
|--lib/
   |
   |--record_invalid.rb (copy content of code above)
Me