OK, I think I found the problem. MySQL (and possibly other databases
as well) won't let you set a default value for a text field (as you
can with a string). This means that a new Person object will have a
*nil* description by default, instead of a blank one:
$ script/console
>> Person.new.description
=> nil
What does this have to do with length validations? Well, under the
hood Rails looks at description.length in order to perform the
validation---but nil.length raises an exception! Unfortunately, Rails
misinterprets this, thinking that the field is too long instead of
simply being nil.
The fix is to add an Active Record callback before the validation to
set the description to the empty string if it's nil:
before_validation :prepare_email, :handle_nil_description
with
def handle_nil_description
self.description = "" if description.nil?
end
As a side note, for some reason there wasn't a validation on the
description length on the master branch, so I added one.
Michael
On Mon, Jun 16, 2008 at 4:40 PM, Fountain <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Thanks Michael,
>
> Here's a little more information:
>
> The problem did not occur until I tried to deploy the application on
> hostingrails.com
> I first encountered the problem when trying run the install. The rake
> failed at the 'create_admin' migration step.
> I got around this by adding some short description text for the admin
> account and the migration went through fine.
>
> I'm assuming the problem has something to do with creating a new
> 'person' with a blank text field.
> My production database has 'null' as the default for the description
> column.
>
> On Jun 16, 3:32 pm, "Michael Hartl" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> That's weird. I'll try to take a look at this tomorrow and see if I
>> can reproduce the problem.
>>
>> Michael
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Jun 14, 2008 at 11:15 AM, Fountain <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>
>> > I tried adding a line to my code that validates the size of the person
>> > description column, but when I do this, every time I try to create a
>> > new user, I get an error saying 'Description can not exceed the 2000
>> > character maximum'.
>>
>> > My current signup form does not actually ask for the description so my
>> > guess is this might be some sort of database misunderstanding. I
>> > assume the problem is somehow connected to the fact that 'description'
>> > is the only column that is a 'text' box. The others are all strings
>> > and integers.
>>
>> > Any ideas? Is this a known problem. I should mention I am pretty new
>> > to rails and programming so this might be a simple thing that I am
>> > just not aware of.
>>
>> > Additionally I don't think I ran into this problem until I deployed my
>> > production version.
>>
>> > Thanks.
>>
>> --
>> Michael Hartl
>> Insoshi social softwarehttp://insoshi.com/
> >
>
--
Michael Hartl
Insoshi social software
http://insoshi.com/
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
Insoshi developer site: http://dogfood.insoshi.com/
Insoshi documentation: http://docs.insoshi.com/
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "Insoshi" group.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected]
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/insoshi?hl=en
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
