Question

I have the following in my ActiveRecord validation:

validates :username, :exclusion => { :in => %w(admin admins administrator administrators), :message => "\"%{value}\" is reserved."}

which works as it should. But when I replace it with:

validates :username, :exclusion => { :in => @reserved_words, :message => "\"%{value}\" is reserved."}
@reserved_words = ["admin","admins","administrator","administrators"]

I get the following error:

An object with the method #include? or a proc or lambda is required, and must be supplied as the :in option of the configuration hash.

Why is this happening?

Answer 1

Do you really initialize your @reserved_words variable AFTER it’s been used? Your lines should be swapped!