Radio buttons for boolean field, how to do a "false"?

Question

I am currently trying to insert some simple true/false radio buttons in Rails 3, but I can't find a way to make a radio button insert "false".

My code is the following:

<%= f.radio_button :accident_free, true %><label for="auction_accident_free_true">ja</label> <%= f.radio_button :accident_free, false %><label for="auction_accident_free_false">nein</label> 

I already tried:

• 1 / 0
• "1" / "0"
• true / false
• "true" / "false"
• "yes" / "no"

but nothing seems to work right for the value false. My field is set with

validates_presence_of :accident_free 

and I always get the message that it has to be filled to continue, when clicking the false button. When clicking the true button, it works fine, but false doesn't get recognized.

Does anyone know how to do it correctly?

Thanks in advance

Arne

Answer 1

This is it:

http://apidock.com/rails/ActiveRecord/Validations/ClassMethods/validates_presence_of

validates_presence_of() validates that the specified attributes are not blank (as defined by Object#blank?)

If you want to validate the presence of a boolean field (where the real values are true and false), you will want to use validates_inclusion_of :field_name, :in => [true, false]

This is due to the way Object#blank? handles boolean values: false.blank? # => true

I tried your example using a scaffold and "1" and "0" as in

<%= f.radio_button :foo, "0" %> <%= f.radio_button :foo, "1" %> 

and they worked.

Answer 2

I recently came to another solution for this:

validates_presence_of :accident_free, :if => 'accident_free.nil?' 

Explanation here