Question

I have custom controller action for activating a new customer acount in a webshop. I have a model called customer.rb. The model generates a key and sends the customer an activation link. The link is routed to the customers_controller.rb and the following action:

def activate_customer
  @customer = Customer.find(params[:customer_id])
    if @customer.present?
     if @customer.activation_key == params[:activation_key]
       @customer.activated = true
       @customer.save
       redirect_to :cart
     else
       redirect_to :root
     end
    else
     redirect_to :root
    end
end

I first tried it without @customer.save but the record did not update. I have raised before and after @customer.activated = true and it all seems fine. The only problem is that the record does does not update. I also checked a possible attar_accessible problem, but that’s not it (I shut of attr_accessible entirely to check). Any ideas? Thanx in advance!

*Edit: checked value of @customer.save, returns false…

*Edit:

The problem seems to be the password validation on the Customer model. The validations look as follows:

# Validations
validates_presence_of :title, :country, :zipcode, :city, :street, :number, :first name, :lastname
validates :email, :presence => true, :uniqueness => true, :email => true
validates_confirmation_of :password, :unless => :validate?
validates_presence_of :password

Any ideas how to skip validations on this specific controller action? Thanx for thinking with me!

Answer 1

You can use conditional validation which is the best practice in this case.

Here is a railscast on that http://railscasts.com/episodes/41-conditional-validations

You can then use some code like this:

attr_accessor :updating_password

validates_confirmation_of :password, :if => should_validate_password?

def should_validate_password?
  updating_password
end

You then need to set updating_password to false if you want to skip validation.

@customer.updating_password = false
@customer.save