Rails Custom Validation error message

Question

Without getting into all the javascript for a textfield, I'd like the following validation:

validates_length_of :brief_description,
  :maximum=>250, 
  :message => "Brief is #{self.brief_description.length} long (max is 250)"

But the self.brief_description reference in the message doesn't work. What's the best way to do this?

I tried #{params[:brief_description].length} as well, but the model doesn't know anything about params...

Tony Collen · Accepted Answer · 2011-02-16 22:04:23Z

1

I could be wrong but I think you can try enclosing the string in single-quotes, and it might defer evaluating the string until runtime.

Short of that, you could write a custom validation (that doesn't use the validates_length_of macro) and do something like:

def validate_brief_description
  errors.add :brief_description, "Brief is #{brief_description.length} long (max is 250)" if brief_description.length > 250
end

answered Feb 16, 2011 at 22:04

Tony Collen

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1 Comment

pedstrom Over a year ago

The single quotes prevented the #{} from being evaluated, but the custom validation did the trick. Thank you!

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