Is there a way to return error code in addition to error message in rails active record validation?

Question

In rails activerecord validation, normally if a validation fails, it will add an error message in the errors attribute of models, however our clients demands an error code be re

Answer 1

errors is just a plain hash, with the key represents the attribute which has an error, and the value represents the error message. So technically your requirement is doable by replacing the text message with a hash. But the downside is you may need to do more things to show the errors in new format.

For example, use a custom validator to add error code

class Foo < ActiveRecord::Base
  attr_accessible :msiisnd
  validate :msiisdn_can_not_be_blank

  def msiisdn_can_not_be_blank
    if msiisdn.blank?
      errors.add(:msiisdn, {code: 101, message: "cannot be blank"})
    end
  end
end

Then use it

foo = Foo.new
foo.errors.count
#=> 0
foo.valid?
#=> false
foo.errors.count
#=> 1
foo.errors[:msiisdn]
#=> [{ code: 101, message: "can not be blank"}]
foo.errors[:msiisdn][0][:code]
#=> 101

So you can use it. But you need to do more work when you need to show the errors correctly, say displaying errors in a form, as this is not a convention.