Ruby on Rails Validation Question Inside Controller

Question

Let's say I have a form_tag in a view gathering a view user input . With this input that I get through the params hash, I want to verify some of htis information such as email phone name.

Can I just verify in the controller or is this a bad thing? I don't plan to save the thing I get to a db or anything, it's just getting put into an email and sent off, but I want to verify these things before it's sent.

Thank you.

EDIT:

Found this http://www.viddler.com/explore/rails3/videos/6/

class Test
 include ActiveRecord::Validations
 validates_presence_of :name, :email
attr_accessor :name, :email
end

Answer 1

You can use the model for whatever you need that is related to the object and don't need to save it. Keeping stuff like this in the model is desirable in order to keep controller tidy. Say you have a user model:

#controller
@user.new params[:user]
@user.check_valid
@user.save # is optional

#user.rb

def check_valid
  !email.blank? and !phone.blank?  
end