Question

I’m totally blocked on this.

See this code:

# user.rb
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_one :address
  accepts_nested_attributes_for :address
  validates_associated :address, :if => Proc.new {|u| u.addressable? }
end

# address.rb
class Address < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :user
  validates_presence_of :address_text
end

# user_test.rb
require File.dirname(__FILE__) + '/../test_helper'
class UserTest < ActiveSupport::TestCase
  setup { }

  test "address validation is not ran w update attributes and anaf" do
    @user = User.create!
    @user.build_address
    assert_nothing_raised do
      @user.update_attributes!(:addressable => false, :address_attributes => {:address => "test"})
    end
  end

  test "address validation w update_attributes and anaf" do
    @user = User.create!
    @user.build_address
    @user.save
    assert_raise ActiveRecord::RecordInvalid do
      @user.update_attributes!(:addressable => true, :address_attributes => {:address => "test"})
    end
  end
end

The first test will fail.

The user model validates an associated address model, but is only supposed to do it if a flag is true. In practice it does it all the time.

What is going on?

Answer 1

Actually I ran into further problems with my (more complicated) real world scenario that were only solved by doing the equivalent of:

def validate_associated_records_for_address
  self.addressable? ? validate_single_association(User.reflect_on_association(:address)) : nil
end

This adapts anaf’s compulsory validations to only run under the condition we want (addressable? is true).

The validates_associated...:if is not necessary now.