Question

I’m trying to create a form using textarea and a submit button that will allow users to do bulk insert. For example, the input would look like this:

0001;MR A
0002;MR B

The result would look like this:

mysql> select * from members;

+------+------+------+
|  id  |  no  | name |
+------+------+------+
|   1  | 0001 | MR A |
+------+------+------+
|   2  | 0002 | MR B |
+------+------+------+

I’m very new to Rails and I’m not sure on how to proceed with this one. Should I use attr_accessor? How do I handle failed validations in the form view? Is there any example? Thanks in advance.

Update

Based on MissingHandle‘s comment, I created a Scaffold and replace the Model’s code with this:

class MemberBulk < ActiveRecord::Base

  attr_accessor :member

  def self.columns
    @columsn ||= []
  end

  def self.column(name, sql_type = nil, default = nil, null = true)
    columns << ActiveRecord::ConnectionAdapters::Column.new(name.to_s, default, sql_type.to_s, null)
  end

  column :data, :text

  validates :data, :create_members, :presence => true

  def create_members
    rows = self.data.split("\r\n")

    @member = Array.new

    rows.each_with_index { |row, i|
      rows[i] = row.strip
      cols = row.split(";")

      p = Member.new
      p.no = cols[0]
      p.name = cols[1]

      if p.valid?
        member << p
      else
        p.errors.map { |k, v| errors.add(:data, "\"#{row}\" #{v}") }
      end
    }
  end

  def create_or_update
    member.each { |p|
      p.save
    }
  end
end

I know the code is far from complete, but I need to know is this the correct way to do it?

Answer 1

In the end I had to change from using Abstract Class to Active Model (not sure why, but it stoppped working the moment I upgrade to Rails v3.1). Here’s the working code:

class MemberBulk
  include ActiveModel::Validations
  include ActiveModel::Conversion
  extend ActiveModel::Naming

  attr_accessor :input, :data

  validates :input, presence: true

  def initialize(attributes = {})no
    attributes.each do |name, value|
      send("#{name}=", value) if respond_to?("#{name}=")
    end
  end

  def persisted?
    false
  end  

  def save
    unless self.valid?
      return false
    end

    data = Array.new

    # Check for spaces
    input.strip.split("\r\n").each do |i|
      if i.strip.empty?
        errors.add(:input, "There shouldn't be any empty lines")
      end

      no, nama = i.strip.split(";")

      if no.nil? or nama.nil?
        errors.add(:input, "#{i} doesn't have no or name")
      else
        no.strip!
        nama.strip!

        if no.empty? or nama.empty?
          errors.add(:input, "#{i} doesn't have no or name")
        end
      end  

      p = Member.new(no: no, nama: nama)
      if p.valid?
        data << p
      else
        p.errors.full_messages.each do |error|
          errors.add(:input, "\"#{i}\": #{error}")  
        end        
      end             
    end # input.strip    

    if errors.empty?
      if data.any?

        begin
          data.each do |d|
            d.save
          end
        rescue Exception => e
          raise ActiveRecord::Rollback
        end

      else
        errors.add(:input, "No data to be processed")
        return false
      end
    else
      return false
    end

  end # def
end