Validate before and after

[dankinit]

I have a 'urlsafe' column in my database. This is a string that gets created off of a company name field aptly called...'name'.

In my model I have the following:

validates_presence_of :name, :phone, etc.. # make sure all elements are there to save (not urlname though, as this is created by the program)
validates_uniqueness_of :urlname, :scope => [:city_safe, :address_state] #make sure there are no other businesses with the urlname, in that city, in that state
 before_save :generate_urlname # generate the urlname from the company name

My problem above comes from the fact I'm stuck wanting to run the first validation to make sure i have a name there, then run the generate_urlname function, and then finally validate the uniquenesss. But since I either have to call the before_save or validate, I can't have both!

I've looked at all the before_save, after_save, etc calls I could make, but none seem to work. I saw you can create your own validation, but I can't find anywhere that explains how to throw that it doesn't validate if you create your own?

Thanks for any suggestions.

[Fenrir2]

Just validate the uniqueness of the name? If the name is unique then so is the urlname.

[dankinit]

Well there can be lots of McDonalds, and even within one city. I'm leaning towards just writing my own validation in the model. Just scouring the internet now looking for some documentation...

[stma]

Just a thought. When you generate_urlname couldn't you tack on the ID as well? You could always strip that out in the display.

So mcdonalds would be mcdonalds00001. The second one would be mcdonalds00002..... and so forth.

Just strip out the last 5 characters in the display (or enough that you have room to grow depending on how many you expect to have).

Of course this is pointless if your goal is to only list ONE mcdonalds per city.

[Fenrir2]

Well your code says: "# generate the urlname from the company name". Suppose your code looks like this:

urlname = "http://#{name}.yoursite.com"

Now the urlname is unique if and only if the name is unique.

Am I missing something?