How do I validate a date in rails?

Question

I created the following cli in order to delete the logs with date format that oldest then 500 min

date format is:

 data-node.log.xxxx-xx-xx-[1-10]

the cli that should removed the logs

find /var/log/test/  -type f -mmin +500 -regextype sed -regex '.*\.log\.[0-9]\{4\}-[0-9]\{2\}-[0-9]\{2\}-[0-9]\{2,10\}$' -delete

as we can see the logs still exists

ls -l /var/log/test/



-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 10:02 data-node.log.2019-12-14
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 10:02 data-node.log.2019-12-15
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 10:02 data-node.log.2019-06-16
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 10:02 data-node.log.2020-01-17
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 10:05 data-node.log.2020-01-1723
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 10:05 data-node.log.2020-01-172334
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 10:05 data-node.log.2020-01-17233434
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 10:05 data-node.log.2020-01-1723343434

where I am wrong?

Solution 1

I'm guessing you're using the date_select helper to generate the tags for the date. Another way you could do it is to use select form helper for the day, month, year fields. Like this (example I used is the created_at date field):

<%= f.select :month, (1..12).to_a, selected: @user.created_at.month %>
<%= f.select :day, (1..31).to_a, selected: @user.created_at.day %>
<%= f.select :year, ((Time.now.year - 20)..Time.now.year).to_a, selected: @user.created_at.year %>

And in the model, you validate the date:

attr_accessor :month, :day, :year
validate :validate_created_at

private

def convert_created_at
  begin
    self.created_at = Date.civil(self.year.to_i, self.month.to_i, self.day.to_i)
  rescue ArgumentError
    false
  end
end

def validate_created_at
  errors.add("Created at date", "is invalid.") unless convert_created_at
end

If you're looking for a plugin solution, I'd checkout the validates_timeliness plugin. It works like this (from the github page):

class Person < ActiveRecord::Base
  validates_date :date_of_birth, on_or_before: lambda { Date.current }
  # or
  validates :date_of_birth, timeliness: { on_or_before: lambda { Date.current }, type: :date }
end 

The list of validation methods available are as follows:

validates_date     - validate value as date
validates_time     - validate value as time only i.e. '12:20pm'
validates_datetime - validate value as a full date and time
validates          - use the :timeliness key and set the type in the hash.

Solution 2

Using the chronic gem:

class MyModel < ActiveRecord::Base
  validate :valid_date?

  def valid_date?
    unless Chronic.parse(from_date)
      errors.add(:from_date, "is missing or invalid")
    end
  end

end

Solution 3

If you want Rails 3 or Ruby 1.9 compatibility try the date_validator gem.

Solution 4

Active Record gives you _before_type_cast attributes which contain the raw attribute data before typecasting. This can be useful for returning error messages with pre-typecast values or just doing validations that aren't possible after typecast.

I would shy away from Daniel Von Fange's suggestion of overriding the accessor, because doing validation in an accessor changes the accessor contract slightly. Active Record has a feature explicitly for this situation. Use it.

Solution 5

A bit late here, but thanks to "How do I validate a date in rails?" I managed to write this validator, hope is useful to somebody:

Inside your model.rb

validate :date_field_must_be_a_date_or_blank

# If your field is called :date_field, use :date_field_before_type_cast
def date_field_must_be_a_date_or_blank
  date_field_before_type_cast.to_date
rescue ArgumentError
  errors.add(:birthday, :invalid)
end

View more solutions

Comments

[Dan Rosenstark]

I don't know if I'll use this for this purpose, but it's a great suggestion.

[Roger]

The suggested solution does not work for me and I am using Rails 2.3.5

[Jack Chu]

I rewrote it to be cleaner, and tested it against Rails 2.3.5 and this does work for me.

[benoitr]

Hi Jack, I've tried your solution, it works for me adding attr_accessible :day, :month, :year. Which doesn't make sense for me... Thanks if you have any idea!

[Calvin]

In this specific example, I had to use Chronic.parse(from_date_before_type_cast) in order to get the string value input. Otherwise Rails would typecast the string with to_date since the field was a datetime field.

[Jason Swett]

In Rails 3, I'm using github.com/adzap/validates_timeliness and it's awesome.

[mjnissim]

The validates_timeliness plugin/gem is really nice to use. Works a charm and keeps my code smaller. Thanks for the tip.

[jflores]

I just tried this. Took all of 2 minutes to install and add validation!

[Mohamad]

This always returns false: "1/1/2013".is_a?(Date) - The date comes from user input, so it's being fed as a string. I'd have to parse it as a date first?

[Trip]

Correct. Date.parse("1/1/2013").is_a?(Date), but you could see that if it doesn't parse at all, its also probably not a date.

[Mohamad]

Need to rescue argument error... ahh, it would have been awesome if it just parsed the string automatically... oh well, there are gem's for that.

[Pinal]

While this link may answer the question, it is better to include the essential parts of the answer here and provide the link for reference. Link-only answers can become invalid if the linked page changes.

[Ryan Duffield]

I like my answer better. Two people agree.

[Wayne Conrad]

@Pinal The link is indeed dead now.

[fatfrog]

Better late than never, and in time for me!