Trying to validate a date - ruby-on-rails

Question

I have a form where i'm trying to validate that a field called "birthday" is not blank, and that the date is a valid date format that the Chronic gem can parse. I always get the error message "Birthday is invalid". I've been trying a simple format "10/10/2010".
How can i validate that the birthday field is of a format that chronic can parse?
User.rb model
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
validates :birthday, :presence => true
validate :birthday_is_date
validate :position, :presence => true
# validate the birthday format
def birthday_is_date
errors.add(:birthday ,Chronic.parse(birthday)) # testing to see the value of :birthday
errors.add(:birthday, "is invalid test message") if ((Chronic.parse(:birthday) rescue ArgumentError) == ArgumentError)
end
end
contacts_controller.rb
# POST /contacts/1/edit
# actually updates the users data
def update_user
#userProfile = User.find(params[:id])
respond_to do |format|
if #userProfile.update_attributes(params[:user])
format.html {
flash[:success] = "Information updated successfully"
redirect_to(profile_path)
}
else
format.html {
flash[:error] = resource.errors.full_messages
render :edit
}
end
end
end

Answer 1

Your birthday_is_date validation always adds an error on the first line. It should be written as follows:
def birthday_is_date
errors.add(:birthday, "is invalid") unless Chronic.parse(birthday)
end

Answer 2

try this
install validates_date_time gem
you can pass validation for date, for example
class Person < ActiveRecord::Base
validates_date :date_of_birth
validates_time :time_of_birth
validates_date_time :date_and_time_of_birth
end
Use :allow_nil to allow the value to be blank.
class Person < ActiveRecord::Base
validates_date :date_of_birth, :allow_nil => true
end
Source : https://github.com/smtlaissezfaire/validates_date_time

Answer 3

From chronic.rubyforge.org:
Chronic uses Ruby’s built in Time class for all time storage and
computation. Because of this, only times that the Time class can
handle will be properly parsed. Parsing for times outside of this
range will simply return nil. Support for a wider range of times is
planned for a future release.
Time zones other than the local one are not currently supported.
Support for other time zones is planned for a future release.
From Date validation in Ruby using the Date object:
A simple validate function
One way to test for a valid date is to try to create a Date object. If
the object is created, the date is valid, and if not, the date is
invalid. Here is a function that accepts year, month, and day, then
returns true if the date is valid and false if the date is invalid.
def test_date(yyyy, mm, dd)
begin
#mydate = Date.new(yyyy, mm, dd)
return true
rescue ArgumentError
return false
end
end
From the accepted answer of How do I validate a date in rails?:
If you're looking for a plugin solution, I'd checkout the
validates_timeliness plugin. It works like this (from the github
page):
class Person < ActiveRecord::Base
validates_date :date_of_birth, :on_or_before => lambda { Date.current }
# or
validates :date_of_birth, :timeliness => {:on_or_before => lambda { Date.current }, :type => :date}
end
The list of validation methods available are as follows:
validates_date - validate value as date
validates_time - validate value as time only i.e. '12:20pm'
validates_datetime - validate value as a full date and time
validates - use the :timeliness key and set the type in the hash.