Rails: Validate with arguments

Question

I am using Rails 3.0.3 where I have quite an extensive validation process.

I want to make a validation where I check if a certain variable is a proper date

Basically this is what I want to do is:

def validate_date(this_date)?

    begin
       Date.parse(this_date)
    rescue
      proper_date = false
    else
          proper_date = true
    end
end

and call this method in my model using:

attr_accessor :given_date    
validate_date(given_date)

but also at another place in my validation file using for example:

attr_accessor :another_date
validate_date(another_date)

or something similar...

What do I need to do to make this work?

Answer 1

you want to add errors instead of returning false, so instead you want to use:

errors.add(:date, "is invalid")