Question

I have a problem and I need an idea how to fix my update method. I have an admin panel where I can create users. This form include name, mail, password, repeated password fields and it works fine. Then I want to have a list of all users and to edit these who I want. The problem is that I want to edit part of the information which is not included in the form of the registration and default is empty. In edit mode my form has two new fields – notes and absences. When I change these fields and call update method I see message that password and repeated password don’t match which is validation in the registration but I do not have these files in edit mode. How could I fix this problem. This is part of my code:

class UsersController < ApplicationController
  def edit
    @user = User.find(params[:id])
    @title = "Edit user"
  end

def update
  @user = User.find(params[:id])
  if @user.update_attributes(params[:user])
    flash[:success] = "Profile updated."
    redirect_to @user
  else
    @title = "Edit user"
    render 'edit'
  end
end


class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  attr_accessor :password
  attr_accessible :name, :email, :password, :password_confirmation
  validates :name,  :presence => true,
                :length   => { :maximum => 50 }
  validates :email, :presence => true

  email_regex = /\A[\w+\-.]+@[a-z\d\-.]+\.[a-z]+\z/i

  validates :email, :presence   => true,
            :format     => { :with => email_regex },
            :uniqueness => true

  validates :password, :presence     => true,
            :confirmation => true,
            :length       => { :within => 6..40 }

  before_save :encrypt_password

  def has_password?(submitted_password)
    encrypted_password == encrypt(submitted_password)
  end

  def self.authenticate(email, submitted_password)
    user = find_by_email(email)
    return nil  if user.nil?
    return user if user.has_password?(submitted_password)
  end

  def self.authenticate_with_salt(id, cookie_salt)
    user = find_by_id(id)
    (user && user.salt == cookie_salt) ? user : nil
  end

  private

  def encrypt_password
    self.salt = make_salt unless has_password?(password)
    self.encrypted_password = encrypt(password)
  end

  def encrypt(string)
    secure_hash("#{salt}--#{string}")
  end

  def make_salt
    secure_hash("#{Time.now.utc}--#{password}")
  end

  def secure_hash(string)
    Digest::SHA2.hexdigest(string)
  end
end

Answer 1

The validation for password presence is true when you are creating a user, but once a user has an encrypted password, you don’t want to force it to be present in all form submissions in the future.

Active record supports adding conditions to validations, so I would suggest putting a condition on the password validation to make it only execute if the user object does not already have an encrypted password. The relevant snippet would be:

validates :password, :presence     => true,
        :confirmation => true,
        :length       => { :within => 6..40 },
        :if           => :needs_password?

def needs_password?
    encrypted_password.nil?
end