Putting the errors in the right place (See related posts)

The idea is to display the error near the field instead of in global area at the top of the page.
Simple… first go into your view and delete the

error_messages_for ‘object’

Then stick this in your application helper.


# application_helper.rb
def error_for(object, method = nil, options={})
if method
err = instance_variable_get("@#{object}").errors.on(method).to_sentence rescue instance_variable_get("@#{object}").errors.on(method)
else
err = @errors["#{object}"] rescue nil
end
options.merge!(:class=>’fieldWithErrors’,
:id=>"#{[object,method].compact.join(’_')}-error",
:style=>(err ? #{options[:style]}":"#{options[:style]};display: none;")
)
content_tag("p",err || "", options )
end


Then in your form view, add an ‘error_for’ call wherever you need one…

# _form.rhtml
  <p><label for="code_project_name">Name</label>
  <%= text_field ‘code_project’, ‘name’  %>
  <%= error_for ‘code_project’, ‘name’ %></p>

If the model fails a validation test, then it will show the message right next to the field that caused the validation problem.
Also note that if you define an instance variable called @errors containing a hash of field_names and messages, they will also be used. This is handy for those form fields that don’t correspond to a model attribute.