How to avoid saving a blank model which attributes can be blank
- by auralbee
Hello people,
I have two models with a HABTM association, let´s say book and author.
class Book
has_and_belongs_to_many :authors
end
class Author
has_and_belongs_to_many :books
end
The author has a set of attributes (e.g. first-name,last-name,age) that can all be blank (see validation).
validates_length_of :first_name, :maximum => 255, :allow_blank => true, :allow_nil => false
In the books_controller, I do the following to append all authors to a book in one step:
@book = Book.new(params[:book])
@book.authors.build(params[:book][:authors].values)
My question: What would be the easiest way to avoid the saving of authors which fields are all blank to prevent too much "noise" in the database?
At the moment, I do the following:
validate :must_have_some_data
def must_have_some_data
empty = true
hash = self.attributes
hash.delete("created_at")
hash.delete("updated_at")
hash.each_value do |value|
empty = false if value.present?
end
if (empty)
errors.add_to_base("Fields do not contain any data.")
end
end
Maybe there is an more elegant, Rails-like way to do that.
Thanks.
