I’m a minimalist, so I’m usually looking for creative ways to get rid of items rather than keep track of them. With that said, for my Sinatra Portfolio Project, I created a CRUD app that keeps track of auction items. I started out by reviewing the MVC framework and building Google sheets to organize my ideas around routes and object relationships.

Custom Validations

Validations keep data you don’t want out of the database. So, if you don’t want people signing up for your app without a username, you could use an ActiveRecord validation and include it in the pertinent class:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  validates :username, :presence => true
end

However, you might need to validate data in ways that are not as common as something like validating the presence of a username. In that case, you would need to create a custom validation. For example, Bidify allows users to list auction items, as well as bid on other people’s items. To ensure users can’t bid on their own item, I created a custom validation. I added validate :no_self_bidding to the Bid classand created ano_self_bidding` method in the same class. You can see this custom validation, along with a few others:

class Bid < ActiveRecord::Base
 belongs_to :user
 belongs_to :listing
 validates_presence_of :user_id
 validates_presence_of :listing_id
 validate :no_self_bidding
 validate :amount_higher_than_current_price
 validate :auction_isnt_over
 def no_self_bidding
   if self.user == self.listing.user
     errors.add(:user_id, "can't bid on your own item :)")
   end   
 end
 def amount_higher_than_current_price
   if !self.amount || self.listing.current_price > self.amount
     errors.add(:amount, "must be higher than current price")
   end
 end
 def auction_isnt_over
   # if end time is in the past, add error
   if self.listing.over?
     errors.add(:base, "auction is over")
   end
 end
end

Happy validating!