Ember Validations

Warning: This project is no longer updated. dockyard/ember-validations is a great similar library

Ember-validations is a Ember.js library that can handle object validations. If you have to check the validity of object properties, this library does it for you. You just have to declare which property you want to validate, and which kind of validation you want for this property.

This library is inspired by the validations of the Ruby gem ActiveRecord.

Getting ember-validations

Currently you must build ember-validations yourself. Clone the repository, run bundle then rake dist. You'll find ember-validations.js in the dist directory.

Example

App.User = Ember.Object.extend( Ember.Validations, {
  country: null,

  validations: {
    name: {
      presence: true
    },
    age: {
      numericality: true,
      length: {
          moreThan: 21,
          lessThan: 99
      },
    },
    email: {
      format: /.+@.+\..{2,4}/
    }
  }
});

Usage

• Extend Ember.Validations mixin:

App.User = Ember.Object.extend( Ember.Validations );

• Define its validations by settings them in its validation property. The following example is a presence validation that ensures the name of the User is set:

App.User = Ember.Object.extend( Ember.Validations, {
  validations: {
    name: {
      presence: true
    }
  }
});

• Launch validations on an object using the validate method.

var user = App.User.create();
user.validate();

• The isValid property is now set as true, or false depending on the validations result:

user.get('isValid'); // => false

Errors

Once the validate method is called, if some properties are invalid, the validationErrors property is updated.

For the example below, we assume we have a User defined like this:

App.User = Ember.Object.extend( Ember.Validations, {
  validations: {
    name: {
      presence: true
    },
    age: {
      numericality: {
        moreThanOrEqualTo: 21,
        lessThan: 99
      }
    },
    'address.zipCode': {
      numericality: true
    }
  }
});

An error is defined by a key, a message, and a path. There are three types of error messages:

• allMessages: It returns all errors. Each of them is an array that contains the path and the message error, as follows:

user.get('validationErrors.allMessages');

Will return this array:

[
  [ "name", "can't be blank" ],
  [ "age", "is not greater than or equal to 21" ],
  [ "age", "is not less than 99" ],
  [ "address.zipCode", "is not a number" ]
]

• fullMessages: It has the same behaviour as allMessages, except that errors are the path and the message concatenated:

[
  "name can't be blank",
  "age is not greater than or equal to 21",
  "age is not less than 99",
  "address.zipCode is not a number"
]

• messages: It returns only errors messages corresponding the path specified (age here):

user.get('validationErrors.age.messages');

Will return this array:

[
  "is not greater than or equal to 21",
  "is not less than 99"
]

Remark: There are also keys and allKeys properties that works like messages, but for error keys.

Validators

Presence

It ensures the attribute is not blank. You can define it as follow, in the validation property:

name: {
  presence: true
}

Length

The length validation is used to check the length of the property. Three options can be passed:

• minimum
• is
• maximum

Example:

password: {
  length: {
    minimum: 6,
    maximum: 12
  }
}

When no option is specified, the is option is set by default:

phone: {
  length: 10
}

Is equivalent to:

phone: {
  length: {
    is: 10
  }
}

Numericality

The numericality validation can have multiple usage, defined by its option:

• onlyInteger
• greaterThan
• greaterThanOrEqualTo
• lessThan
• lessThanOrEqualTo
• equalTo

Example:

amount: {
  numericality: {
    moreThanOrEqualTo: 1,
    lessThan: 100
  }
}

When no option is passed, it just add an error if the value can not be parsed as a number (e.g. when the value contains letter):

amount: {
  numericality: true
}

Format

It validates whether the attribute has (or not, depending on the option specified) the supplied regexp.

The simplest way to use it is as follow:

email: {
  format: /.+@.+\..{2,4}/
}

But you can specify options with and/or without:

password: {
  format: {
    with: /[a-zA-Z]+/,
    without: /[0-9]+/
  }
}

Match

It validates whether the contents of 2 properties are the same

There is only 1 option:

• match

Example:

password: {
  match: {
    property: {
      "confirmPassword"
    }
  }
},
confirmPassword: {
  ....
}

Single property validation

Sometime you could want to validate only one property. You can do this by calling validateProperty('attributeName') instead of validate(). It will also update the isValid property if the validity of the object changes.

Runtime validations

A function can be passed to the validations options for runtime validations. An example could be:

age: {
  length: {
    moreThan: function() {
      return this.get('country') === 'France' ? 18 : 21;
    }
  }
}

Skipping validations

Validators will, by default, skip validations on blank values. The presence validation ignores this option for obvious reasons.

You can disable this behaviour by setting the allowBlank option to false.

Custom validations

On-the-fly

You can define custom validation function, like this:

password: {
  myCustomValidator: {
    validator: function(object, attribute, value) {
      if (!value.match(/[A-Z]/)) {
        object.get('validationErrors').add(attribute, 'invalid');
      }
    }
  }
}

Write your own validator

You can write your own validator easily.

• Define your validator in the Ember.Validators namespace. It allows to use via its name. For example, writing an Ember.Validators.FooValidator allows you to use it using:

validations: {
  name: {
    foo: true
  }
}

• Extend Ember.Validator and implement the _validate method. Just take a look at the existing validators to see how to write it.

• That's all folks!

Building Ember-Validations

1. Run rake dist task to build Ember-validations.js. Two builds will be placed in the dist/ directory.
   • ember-validations.js is a unminified version (generally used for development)
   • ember-validations.min.js is the minified version, production ready

If you are building under Linux, you will need a JavaScript runtime for minification. You can either install nodejs or gem install therubyracer.

Build API Docs

NOTE: Require node.js to generate it.

Preview API documentation

Run rake docs:preview.

The docs:preview task will build the documentation and make it available at http://localhost:9292/index.html

Build API documentation

Run rake docs:build

The HTML documentation is built in the docs directory

How to run Unit Tests

Setup

1. Install Ruby 1.9.2+. There are many resources on the web can help; one of the best is rvm.

2. Install Bundler: gem install bundler

3. Run bundle inside the project root to install the gem dependencies.

In Your Browser

1. To start the development server, run rackup.

2. Then visit: `http://localhost:9292/tests/index.html

From the CLI

1. Install phantomjs from http://phantomjs.org

2. Run rake test to run a basic test suite or run rake test[all] to run a more comprehensive suite.