Add, Remove, or Change a Mongoid Validation

In the Workarea codebase, you may encounter model validations in Mongoid model classes, since they are responsible for persisting data that can be handled by the application into the database. Validations are commonly used to clean user-generated data (for example, data that is entered on a website, such as a user's email address or password), and ensure that the kind of data that's going into the database is valid and can be "handled" by the application at a later date. To accomplish this, Workarea uses ActiveModel::Validations, which is the same engine powering ActiveRecord Validations, and indeed most of Workarea's validation logic works exactly like its out-of-box Rails counterpart.

Validations are typically used for data entered by the user on a public interface. For example, an Order::Item has validations on the quantity and SKU of the item, but Fulfillment::Item will not, because Fulfillment records are typically created automatically in the backend when an Order is being sent over to the OMS or Fulfillment system. As a result, you may see less validations in a Workarea application than you would in a conventional Rails application. This is intentional, as the Workarea platform (and, by proxy, the web application running Workarea) is designed to handle missing or invalid/incorrect data at the UI level, meaning that less-than-perfect data can be inserted into MongoDB, and the application won't throw fatal errors when attempting to render or deal with that data. For this reason, when adding new fields to Workarea models, it's best to configure default values instead of validating data and producing an error when it's not valid. You should only validate data if it's meant for storefront-facing user input, and even then, your code should be written defensively to deal with the data when it's not 100% valid.

Change an Existing Validation

The most common case is to change (or override) an existing validation based on a special case wherein your data doesn't necessarily match up with the validation rules imposed by base.

Validations are loaded from dependencies first, then read from top-to-bottom in the class definition. What this means for you is that a validation defined in the core platform can be modified by adding a decorator with a new validates or validate entry in the decorated { } block, since this will be processed after the validations on the base class have been defined. For example, if you want to prevent validating a user's password if they are signed in with OAuth, you might decorate the User model like so:

module Workarea
  decorate User do
    decorated do
      validates :password, password: { strength: :required_password_strength }, unless: :is_omniauthed?
    end
  end
end

When decorating validations, always remember to copy the whole validation line from Workarea (or one of its plugins), as validates / validate lines for the same key will completely overwrite the original validation. This is evidenced by the fact that the line...

validates :password, unless: :is_omniauthed?

...will not do anything, the condition must be expressed as part of the rewritten validation.

Add a New Validation

Adding new validations is rare for model data. As described above, validating data and producing an error for the user to deal with is a less desirable experience than allowing any user data to be entered, and cleaning said data in the background, without the need for involvement by a customer or admin.

That said, Mongoid already includes the ActiveModel::Validations module, which means you have the same capabilities as you would have access to in Rails' out-of-box ActiveRecord Validations. If you're looking for detailed information on the various out-of-box validations you might need, check out the aforementioned Rails guide.

For example, if your payment provider requires phone numbers on the billing address, you might write a decoration to add a validation for :phone_number on the Payment::Address model:

module Workarea
  decorate Payment::Address do
    decorated do
      validates :phone_number, presence: true
    end
  end
end

Remove an Existing Validation

Removing validations is a bit trickier. You essentially have to remove all validations, then add back the ones that you need in the object. Fortunately, Workarea makes that a lot easier for you with our handy-dandy ActiveModel::Unvalidate gem!

This library can be added into your project in Gemfile:

gem 'active_model-unvalidate'

After running bundle to install it, you can use the unvalidates and unvalidate macro methods in the models for which you wish to remove validations. For example, if you no longer want to validate the existence of a :country because you don't sell to other countries, you could decorate Workarea::Address like so:

module Workarea
  decorate Payment::Address do
    decorated do
      unvalidates :country, :presence
    end
  end
end

The unvalidates macro takes two arguments, the name of the field being unvalidated, and the "type" of validation(s) to remove validation for (in this case, :presence). Use unvalidates for removing validations created with the Rails macro validates. For custom method-based validations that are configured using validate, use the unvalidate macro, like so:

module Workarea
  decorate Payment::Address do
    decorated do
      unvalidate :postal_code_presence
    end
  end
end
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