Question

So I have a rails app with a url field for embedding youtube and vimeo videos. Everything works fine but I cannot find a solution to validating both fields but only when one is used.

A user chooses a video url and has a choice of using vimeo or youtube and upon saving I would like to validate that the url code of the video(youtube or vimeo) is correct.

This is what I have

youtube validate code

validates :url ,
:format => {:with => /(https?):\/\/(www.)?(youtube\.com\/watch\?v=|youtu\.be\/)([A-Za-z0-9_-]*)(\&\S+)?.*/}

Vimeo validate code

validates :url ,
:format => {:with => /http:\/\/(www.)?vimeo\.com\/([A-Za-z0-9._%-]*)((\?|#)\S+)?/}

When I have the youtube code I cannot save a vimeo video and vice versa.

Both of the above codes work but only one, how can I have it so both work at the same time?

Answer 1

You could mash your regexes together into one big incomprehensible regex or you could use a custom validation method:

validate :youtube_or_vimeo_url

private

def youtube_or_vimeo_url
    return if(self.url =~ /\A(https?):\/\/(www.)?(youtube\.com\/watch\?v=|youtu\.be\/)([A-Za-z0-9_-]*)(\&\S+)?.*/)
    return if(self.url =~ /\Ahttp:\/\/(www.)?vimeo\.com\/([A-Za-z0-9._%-]*)((\?|#)\S+)?/)
    errors.add(:url, 'Bad video URL etc.')
end

You could also separate your two YouTube patterns with this approach and get code that is easier to read.

And while I’m here, if you’re using a lot of slashes in your regexes you might want to use %r{} instead:

def youtube_or_vimeo_url
    return if(self.url =~ %r{\A(https?)://(www.)?(youtube\.com/watch\?v=|youtu\.be/)([A-Za-z0-9_-]*)(\&\S+)?.*})
    return if(self.url =~ %r{\Ahttp://(www.)?vimeo\.com/([A-Za-z0-9._%-]*)((\?|#)\S+)?})
    errors.add(:url, 'Bad video URL etc.')
end