Using date_select in form and wanting to rejecct_if date is empty

Question

I have a period model, containing start_date and end_date. It belongs to a Topic model.

In my topic form, I want to manage the period as well. So first I just used two text fields for the two dates in the period. I also have a reject_if end_date is nil.

  accepts_nested_attributes_for :period,
    reject_if: lambda { |p| p[:end_date].blank? }

It works. And a few months later I changed form to use date_select, that displays a few select statements for inputting date.

When I did this, I found out that each select will be something like this:

<select name="topic[period_attributes][end_date(1i)]" id="topic_period_attributes_end_date_1i">

Notice the 1i, which means my reject_if no longer works, as anything will be rejected. I need to change to:

  accepts_nested_attributes_for :period,
    reject_if: lambda { |p| p[:'end_date(1i)']].blank? }

This would work, but it's not as good as before (checking only year of a date seems error prone).

Is there a correct way to do reject when I use date_select?

Answer 1

You can add a class helper method that checks all portions of the :end_date attribute:

def self.date_populated?(params)
  ['1i', '2i', '3i'].select{|date_part| 
    params[:"end_date(#{date_part})"].blank?
  }.blank?
end

and check the helper:

reject_if: lambda { |p| !date_populated?(p) }