Question

I’m trying to write a custom validation for my store.website. I want the method to check if the website field starts with http:// or https://. This is what I’ve tried:

class Store < ActiveRecord::Base
  validate :website_has_correct_format

  def website_has_correct_format
    self.website = self.website.downcase.start_with?(/https?:\/\//, '')
  end
end

This doesn’t work though. For some strange reason it literally just saves the letter t.

What’s the correct way to do this? Also, can I put a :message to it as well?

Answer 1

1. Don’t modify the value in the validator; validators should validate the existing data without changing it.

2. The start_with? method takes a normal String as an argument, not a Regexp.

So, you can implement your validator like this:

def website_has_correct_format
  errors.add(:website, "Wrong website") unless website.downcase.start_with?('https://', 'http://')
end