How do you validate uniqueness of a pair of ids in Ruby on Rails?

Question

Suppose the following DB migration in Ruby:

    create_table :question_votes do |t|
      t.integer :user_id
      t.integer :question_id
      t.integer :vote

          


        

Answer 1

When you are creating a new record, that doesn't work because the id of your parent model doesn't exist still at moment of validations.

This should to work for you.

class B < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :ab
  has_many :a, :through => :ab
end

class AB < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :b
  belongs_to :a
end

class A < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :ab
  has_many :b, :through => :ab

  after_validation :validate_uniqueness_b

  private
  def validate_uniqueness_b
    b_ids = ab.map(&:b_id)
    unless b_ids.uniq.length.eql? b_ids.length
      errors.add(:db, message: "no repeat b's")
    end
  end
end

In the above code I get all b_id of collection of parameters, then compare if the length between the unique values and obtained b_id are equals.
If are equals means that there are not repeat b_id.

Note: don't forget to add unique in your database's columns.