Validations


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Your console store app can be used to perform all sorts of actions, including ones that shouldn't be valid. For example, let's say we create a product in the rails console without any information in it:

prod = Product.create

This outputs:

 (0.2ms)  begin transaction
  SQL (0.7ms)  INSERT INTO "products"...
   (1.4ms)  commit transaction
 => #<Product id: 9, name: nil, description: nil, price: nil, ... > 

This just saved a product to the database with no values filled in. This is not only useless, it can cause bugs when other code expects certain values to exist in a product, such as a product's name. Go ahead and destroy the product just created:

prod.destroy

To prevent an invalid product from being created, we should add code to validate our data before it is saved. Rails provides a validates method for this purpose. Add the validates line to your Product model:

class Product < ActiveRecord::Base
  validates :name, presence: true

 belongs_to :category
end

The validates method takes in parameters for the column and the property you're ensuring, such as the name and presence.

Now that we've ensured every product will have a name, let's make sure every product has a price. Enter the code to do that below and in your Product class.

Terminal Time

Reload your console and try to create an empty product like before.


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