Using ruby on rails validation helpers inside custom validations - ruby-on-rails

Question

Let's say I have lots of attributes that can only have a specific set of string values.
Typically we'd see the following.
class User < ApplicationRecord
validates :foo, inclusion: { in: ['some', 'array'] }
validates :bar, inclusion: { in: ['another', 'array'] }
validates :moo, inclusion: { in: ['one_more', 'array'] }
end
I have lots of these types of validations in my model and I want to DRY them up. So I tried the below but I get a error undefined method 'validates' for #User:0x00007fdc10370408.
class User < ApplicationRecord
VALIDATION_ENUMS = {
foo: %w[foo1 foo2],
bar: %w[bar1 bar2]
}.freeze
validate :validate_enums
def validate_enums
VALIDATION_ENUMS.each_key do |attribute|
validates attribute, inclusion: { in: VALIDATION_ENUMS[attribute] }
end
end
end
How do I get access to the ActiveModel::Validations helper methods from within my function?
Or is there a better way to do this?

Answer 1

Remember that validates is a class method, only executed once when the class is loaded to establish what will be validated. validate is calling an instance method.
A better way might be to execute the DRY code immediately when loading the class.
class User < ApplicationRecord
validate_enums = {
foo: %w[foo1 foo2],
bar: %w[bar1 bar2]
}.freeze
validate_enums.each do |key, array|
validates key, inclusion: { in: array }
end
Note that as you don't reference validate_enums ever again, you don't need to make it a class constant, which is why I didn't.
But you don't really save any lines and add complexity, so I'd stick with the explicit validates, myself.

Answer 2

This approach won't fly. The validation methods are class methods that modify the class itself while you are writing an instance method that get called on an instance of the class when #valid? is called.
If you want to dynamically add existing validations to the class you need to create a class method:
class User < ApplicationRecord
def self.add_inclusion_validations(hash)
# don't use each_key if you're iterating over both keys and values
hash.each do |key, values|
validates_presence_of key, in: values
end
end
add_inclusion_validations(
foo: %w[foo1 foo2],
bar: %w[bar1 bar2]
)
end
Of course you could also just skip the method completely:
class User < ApplicationRecord
{
foo: %w[foo1 foo2],
bar: %w[bar1 bar2]
}.each do |key, values|
validates_presence_of key, in: values
end
end
If what you instead want is to write a validation method that uses the existing functionality of other validations you would create a ActiveRecord::Validator or ActiveRecord::EachValidator subclass and use the existing validations there. But you really need to start by reading the guides and API docs so that you have a base understanding of how that works.