validate and update single attribute rails - ruby-on-rails

Question

I have the following in my user model
attr_accessible :avatar, :email
validates_presence_of :email
has_attached_file :avatar # paperclip
validates_attachment_size :avatar,
:less_than => 1.megabyte,
:message => 'Image cannot be larger than 1MB in size',
:if => Proc.new { |imports| !imports.avatar_file_name.blank? }
in one of my controllers, I ONLY want to update and validate the avatar field without updating and validating email.
How can I do this?
for example (this won't work)
if #user.update_attributes(params[:user])
# do something...
end
I also tried with update_attribute('avatar', params[:user][:avatar]), but that would skip the validations for avatar field as well.

Answer 1

You could validate the attribute by hand and use update_attribute, that skips validation. If you add this to your User:
def self.valid_attribute?(attr, value)
mock = self.new(attr => value)
if mock.valid?
true
else
!mock.errors.has_key?(attr)
end
end
And then update the attribute thusly:
if(!User.valid_attribute?('avatar', params[:user][:avatar])
# Complain or whatever.
end
#user.update_attribute('avatar', params[:user][:avatar])
You should get your single attribute updated while only (manually) validating that attribute.
If you look at how Milan Novota's valid_attribute? works, you'll see that it performs the validations and then checks to see if the specific attr had issues; it doesn't matter if any of the other validations failed as valid_attribute? only looks at the validation failures for the attribute that you're interested in.
If you're going to be doing a lot of this stuff then you could add a method to User:
def update_just_this_one(attr, value)
raise "Bad #{attr}" if(!User.valid_attribute?(attr, value))
self.update_attribute(attr, value)
end
and use that to update your single attribute.

Answer 2

A condition?
validates_presence_of :email, :if => :email_changed?

Answer 3

Have you tried putting a condition on the validates_presence_of :email ?
http://ar.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveRecord/Validations/ClassMethods.html#M000083
Configuration options:
if - Specifies a method, proc or string to call to determine if the validation should occur (e.g. :if => :allow_validation, or :if => Proc.new { |user| user.signup_step > 2 }). The method, proc or string should return or evaluate to a true or false value.
unless - Specifies a method, proc or string to call to determine if the validation should not occur (e.g. :unless => :skip_validation, or :unless => Proc.new { |user| user.signup_step <= 2 }). The method, proc or string should return or evaluate to a true or false value.

Answer 4

I am assuming you need this, because you have a multi-step wizard, where you first upload the avatar and the e-mail is filled in later.
To my knowledge, with your validations as they are, I see no good working solution. Either you validate all, or you update the avatar without validations. If it would be a simple attribute, you could check if the new value passes the validation seperately, and then update the model without validations (e.g. using update_attribute).
I can suggest two possible alternative approaches:
either you make sure that the e-mail is always entered first, which I believe is not a bad solution. And then, with each save, the validation is met.
otherwise, change the validation. Why would you declare a validation on a model, if there are records in the database that do not meet the validation? That is very counter-intuitive.
So I would propose something like this:
validate :presence_of_email_after_upload_avatar
def presence_of_email_after_upload_avatar
# write some test, when the email should be present
if avatar.present?
errors.add(:email, "Email is required") unless email.present?
end
end
Hope this helps.

Answer 5

Here is my solution.
It keeps the same behaviour than .valid? method, witch returns true or false, and add errors on the model on witch it was called.
class MyModel < ActiveRecord::Base
def valid_attributes?(attributes)
mock = self.class.new(self.attributes)
mock.valid?
mock.errors.to_hash.select { |attribute| attributes.include? attribute }.each do |error_key, error_messages|
error_messages.each do |error_message|
self.errors.add(error_key, error_message)
end
end
self.errors.to_hash.empty?
end
end
> my_model.valid_attributes? [:first_name, :email] # => returns true if first_name and email is valid, returns false if at least one is not valid
> my_modal.errors.messages # => now contain errors of the previous validation
{'first_name' => ["can't be blank"]}