Validate boolean fields in Rails ActiveRecord

Question

I need to validate boolean fields for a Rails ActiveRecord object. I used the common solution to this problem:

validates :boolean_field, :inclusion => { :in => [true, false] }

But although this solutions solves the problem with validating false values, it still allows to save strings to the boolean_field:

my_object.boolean_field = "string"
my_object.save # => true
my_object.boolean_field # => false

Why does this happen if I specified the inclusion to [true, false]? And more importantly, how do I validate only true and false values?

P.S. If it is important to the question, I'm using PostgreSQL.

Look at here http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5170008/rails-validating-inclusion-of-a-boolean-fails-tests might help you — Dipak Gupta, Oct 14 '14 at 14:28

Rajdeep Singh · Accepted Answer · 2016-04-06T06:28:21.300

You can validate by checking datatype, you can use is_a? and pass class name of the datatype as a parameter

pry(main)> a = "aaaaa"
=> "aaaaa"
pry(main)> a.is_a?(Boolean)
=> false

Since it was a string it returned false, now try for boolean

pry(main)> b = true
=> true
pry(main)> b.is_a?(Boolean)
=> true

Add a custom validation by using this logic

validate :check_boolean_field

def check_boolean_field
  errors.add(...) unless boolean_field.is_a?(Boolean)
end

1 Answers1