Question

i have followin the http://ruby.railstutorial.org/

class User < ActiveRecord
  attr_accessible ..., :password, :password_confirmation
  has_secure_password

  validates :password, :presence => true,
                       :length => { :minimum => 6 }
  validates :password_confirmation, :presence => true

  ....
end

the problem is to create a new user this works fine, both passwords must be present and they need to match, when i update it requires me to provide the password

for example if another controller wants to change any field of User i must provide a password because otherwise i will not be able to update.

how can i formulate a contition to only require password/password_confirmation when creating the model or doing password update ?

Answer 1

If you’re using rails3, you can skip validations. From the docs:

The following methods skip validations, and will save the object to
the database regardless of its validity. They should be used with
caution.

• decrement!
• decrement_counter
• increment!
• increment_counter
• toggle!
• touch
• update_all
• update_attribute
• update_column
• update_counters

Note that save also has the ability to skip validations if passed :validate => false as argument. This technique should be used with caution.

Basically, use find to find the appropriate user, update whatever fields you want, user.save!(:validate=>false), and Bob’s your uncle!