A few questions about a Rails model for a simple addressbook app

Question

I have a Rails application that lists information about local services. My objectives for this model are as follows: 1. Require the name and tag_list fields. 2. Require one or more of the tollfreephone, phone, phone2, mobile, fax, email or website fields. 3. If the paddress field has a value, then encode it with the Geokit plugin. Here is my entry.rb model:

class Entry < ActiveRecord::Base

  validates_presence_of :name, :tag_list
  validates_presence_of :tollfreephone or :phone or :phone2 or :mobile or :fax or :email or :website
  acts_as_taggable_on :tags
  acts_as_mappable :auto_geocode=>{:field=>:paddress, :error_message=>'Could not geocode physical address'}

  before_save :geocode_paddress
  validate :required_info

  def required_info
    unless phone or phone2 or tollfreephone or mobile or fax or email or website
      errors.add_to_base "Please have at least one form of contact information."
    end
  end

  private
  def geocode_paddress
    #if paddress_changed?
    geo=Geokit::Geocoders::MultiGeocoder.geocode (paddress)
    errors.add(:paddress, "Could not Geocode address") if !
geo.success
    self.lat, self.lng = geo.lat,geo.lng if geo.success
    #end 
  end
end

Requiring name and tag_list work, but requiring one (or more) of the tollfreephone, phone, phone2, mobile, fax, email or website fields does not.

As for encoding with Geokit, in order to save a record with the model I have to enter an address. Which is not the behavior I want. I would like it to not require the paddress field, but if the paddress field does have a value, it should encode the geocode. As it stands, it always tries to geocode the incoming entry. The commented out "if paddress_changed?" was not working and I could not find something like "if paddress_exists?" that would work.

Help with any of these issues would be greatly appreciated. I posted three questions pertaining to my model because I'm not sure if they are preventing each other from working. Thank you for reading my questions.

Answer 1

I don't have ruby on here, but I'm pretty sure you can't do that with validates_presence_of.

You'll need to do something like:

validates_presence_of :tollfreephone, :unless => some_method_to_tell_if_other_methods_are_there

As for the geocoder method, maybe just check if it's nil? Something like:

def geocode_paddress
    if paddress != nil
        geo = Geokit::Geocoders::MultiGeocoder.geocode (paddress)
        if geo.success
           self.lat, self.lng = geo.lat,geo.lng
        else
           errors.add(:paddress, "Could not Geocode address")
        end
    end
end

Answer 2

I see following problems in your code:

1) Duplicate presence checks

2) Auto and manual geo coding at the same time.

Here is a version of your code that might work:

class Entry < ActiveRecord::Base

  acts_as_mappable 
  acts_as_taggable_on   :tags

  validates_presence_of :name, :tag_list
  validate              :required_info

  before_save           :geocode_paddress


private

  def required_info
    if( phone.empty?  and phone2.empty? and tollfreephone.empty? and 
        mobile.empty? and fax.empty?    and email.empty?         and 
        website.empty? 
      ) 
      errors.add_to_base "Please have at least one form of contact information."
    end
  end


  def geocode_paddress
    # if paddress is nil or empty set the old values to nil and return    
    ((self.lat = self.lng = nil); return true) if paddress.empty?
    g=Geokit::Geocoders::MultiGeocoder.geocode(paddress)
    (errors.add(:paddress,"Could not Geocode address");
       return false) unless g.success
    self.lat, self.lng = g.lat, g.lng
  end
end

Edit

The required_info validation fails as the input data submitted by the form contains empty strings for missing fields rather than null values. Hence the phone or phone2 etc. check always returned true. I have changed the validation code to address this edge case. I am quite sure it will work now.

PS: This is a typical scenario where you should be using a debugger. Download and play with any free IDE like Aptana Radrails OR Netbeans. Once you are familiar with the tool you will be able to easily debug such issues.