I.NFECTIO.US: Enhancing Rails Errors

Enhancing Rails Errors

Bob Silva — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 17:52:00 -0800

After the first day of playing with the Rails framework, I decided the error messages generated by the validation routines were a bit lacking for my taste. It would be nice if the errors displayed followed the same order as your form elements and the humanizing only works if you name your table columns with this in mind. Knowing Ruby and Rails are all-powerful, I figured there must be an elegant way to fix this without writing my own custom error handling for each view. Rails Plugins to the rescue.

So here is my "improved" error_messages_for function.

<%= error_messages_for 'client', { :priority => ['first_name', 'last_name'], :attr_names => {'first_name' => 'Surely, your mother gave you a name?', 'last_name' => 'Suffering from Alzheimers are you?', 'gender' => 'Now I understand why your mother did not name you'}, :defaults=> false, :header => 'You need to correct {count} error(s) before we can save this {object}', :sub_header => 'What on earth were you thinking?' } %>

This will print out:

I admit, this is a bit cumbersome, but it solved the problem I had and for anyone else thats anal about little things like this, it will solve your problems too!

You can download the plugin here. To use the plugin, just extract it to your vendor/plugins directory in your Rails Project. View the README and add some spice to your errors. Let me know if you have ideas for improvement or you have any problems. Enjoy!

UPDATE: Just released version 0.2. This adds the ability to pass in an array of object names and have the errors consolidated into one container.

"Enhancing Rails Errors" by Mike

Thu, 15 Feb 2007 14:04:29 -0800

Matt Allen: Your fix didn't quite work for me until I modified it to make sure the variable isn't nil before checking that *.error.nil?:

object_names.each { |name| objects  instance_variable_get("@#{name}") if !instance_variable_get("@#{name}").nil? && !instance_variable_get("@#{name}").errors.nil? }

"Enhancing Rails Errors" by Hernan

Mon, 12 Feb 2007 13:51:29 -0800

I couldn't make it work for Rails 1.2.1; someone else has the same problem? Thanks in advance!

"Enhancing Rails Errors" by FiFouille

Wed, 07 Feb 2007 05:43:31 -0800

and I made a mistake ... true must be replaced by

value[1] =~ /^\^/

giving this line :

content_tag("ul", errors.collect { |value| content_tag("li", ((options[:attr_names].has_key?(value[0])) ? "#{options[:attr_names][value[0]]}" + (options[:defaults] ? " #{value[1]}" : '') : value[1] =~ /^\^/ ? "#{value[1][1..-1]}" : "#{value[0].humanize} #{value[1]}")) }),

replacing the 'old' one :

content_tag("ul", errors.collect { |value| content_tag("li", ((options[:attr_names].has_key?(value[0])) ? "#{options[:attr_names][value[0]]}" + (options[:defaults] ? " #{value[1]}" : '') : "#{value[0].humanize} #{value[1]}")) }),

"Enhancing Rails Errors" by FiFouille

Wed, 07 Feb 2007 05:23:08 -0800

Just made a little modification to imitate comportement of this plugin http://rubyforge.org/projects/custom-err-msg/ So if your validation message starts with a '^', the humanized column name is not display before your custom message You'll only have to specify order, header and sub_header in your view, errors messages are still held in the model in error_messages_for.rb changed : content_tag("ul", errors.collect { |value| content_tag("li", ((options[:attr_names].has_key?(value[0])) ? "#{options[:attr_names][value[0]]}" + (options[:defaults] ? " #{value[1]}" : '') : "#{value[0].humanize} #{value[1]}")) }),-- to : content_tag("ul", errors.collect { |value| content_tag("li", ((options[:attr_names].has_key?(value[0])) ? "#{options[:attr_names][value[0]]}" + (options[:defaults] ? " #{value[1]}" : '') : true ? "#{value[1][1..-1]}" : "#{value[0].humanize} #{value[1]}")) }), this is my first 'patch' in the source of Rails and Rails plugins, so don't take this as 100% bullet proof PS : I can't paste the diff file, impossible to get proper form with this commenty box

"Enhancing Rails Errors" by Alexey

Wed, 31 Jan 2007 07:28:55 -0800

Exxxellent pluging !

"Enhancing Rails Errors" by Spidou

Sat, 27 Jan 2007 11:11:20 -0800

try restart the server!

"Enhancing Rails Errors" by Jürgen

Wed, 10 Jan 2007 06:48:11 -0800

I don't know why, but the plugin is not picked up automatically, I dropped the plugin correctly into the vendor directory. So when I call the error_messages_for method it will still call the standard rails one. Anyone can help?

"Enhancing Rails Errors" by dodah

Wed, 27 Dec 2006 11:10:00 -0800

{'guest' = 'Gäst', 'title' = 'Titel', 'comment' = 'Kommentar'} would be nice if we could do: {:guest = 'Gäst', :title = 'Titel', :comment = 'Kommentar'}

"Enhancing Rails Errors" by Diego

Fri, 22 Dec 2006 15:06:39 -0800

Thanks, saved my day. It seems this is a weak point in ruby. Thanks to your help I found a solution

"Enhancing Rails Errors" by piter

Sun, 03 Dec 2006 15:31:18 -0800

Could you add to your plugin a small override of class Base from ActionView module? There is hardcoded "div" usage, but i don't think that "div" is the best tag in that case. I think "span" will be better.

"Enhancing Rails Errors" by jdub

Thu, 30 Nov 2006 20:04:04 -0800

This works great! Thank you! A question: Is there an elegant way to handle multiple errors generated by the errors.add_to_base method? Right now, the error is returned as an attribute named 'base', which can be overridden, but I ran into trouble with more than one possible Base error.

"Enhancing Rails Errors" by Matt Allen

Thu, 30 Nov 2006 16:55:51 -0800

Inanc; You method doesn't work if you hand in an array of modules. Try this one. Change line 10 to read

object_names.each { |name| objects << instance_variable_get("@#{name}") if !instance_variable_get("@#{name}").errors.nil? }

"Enhancing Rails Errors" by Inanc Gumus

Tue, 31 Oct 2006 19:58:06 -0800

Thanks for the plug-in. Notice that if there is no error an exception occurs. This patch beats the nut:

# put this at the top of the error_messages_for method


        object = instance_variable_get("@#{object_names}")
        return "" if !object || object.errors.empty?

"Enhancing Rails Errors" by kyle

Mon, 30 Oct 2006 15:26:32 -0800

Beautiful. Great job.

"Enhancing Rails Errors" by Petr

Mon, 09 Oct 2006 02:27:50 -0700

This must be included in future version of Rails. Very good.

"Enhancing Rails Errors" by Petr

Mon, 09 Oct 2006 02:27:48 -0700

This must be included in future version of Rails. Very good.

"Enhancing Rails Errors" by vr_mex

Tue, 29 Aug 2006 10:03:06 -0700

it would be very usefull if you could add validating and error message handling when using observe_field

"Enhancing Rails Errors" by Sebastien

Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:54:50 -0700

Thanks for the amazingly helpful plugin! Do you have some more detailed instructions for a newbie such as myself? I've changed the Header & subheader but the priority implementation eludes me. Thanks for any and all help :)

"Enhancing Rails Errors" by Chris

Mon, 24 Jul 2006 21:12:35 -0700

First of all, I really like your plugin. I'm big on the error messages and your plugin makes them very easy to customize. Just one small thing: * If you use errors.add_to_base, it'll by default display an attr_name of 'Base' at the beginning of your error message. Sure, you could override the error message completely in error_messages_for... but I made a small tweak to the way errors are displayed to get it to play a little nicer: #{value[0].humanize unless value[0] == 'base'}

"Enhancing Rails Errors" by kris

Wed, 19 Jul 2006 04:09:17 -0700

Used this, good stuff. Might be nice to put in the readme that you need to copy the folder to vendor/plugins for those who have never done so before :)

"Enhancing Rails Errors" by Herman

Mon, 03 Jul 2006 06:05:37 -0700

Thanks a lot ! Works absolutely great for me.

"Enhancing Rails Errors" by iqram

Sun, 25 Jun 2006 12:29:31 -0700

Very useful function. Saved me a lot of thought and time! Appreciate it.