Question

I validate all my integer fields in the schema. Should I be doing the same with datetime fields?

There doesn’t seem to be validation built into rails for doing this (if it’s something that should be done at all). I’ve seen a couple of gems available that add this functionality, but is this a good practice to do it to begin with or totally unnecessary?

Answer 1

Of course its a good practice of doing the same to be in the safer side. In similar situations, I used to write a custom validation method as follows,

validate :validate_date_of_birth

def validate_date_of_birth
  begin
    Date.parse(dob)
  rescue
    errors.add(:dob, "is an invalid date")
  end
end

If gems provide a better validation option we could go for that as well.