Custom callback

dummy@example.com (guhemama) — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 01:33:41 +0000

I'm building an app that allows users to set their current town and hometown from a huge table (millions of records), so I implemented it without relations (it's faster than using relations, even with cache). I used some custom code to normalize inputs and discard invalid 'city' IDs.

The thing is, how good is my code? I'm new to Ruby/Rails, and I was wondering if I'm not doing things the hard (or wrong) way.

class UserProfile < ActiveRecord::Base
  attr_accessible :town_current, :town_home, :town_current_id, :town_home_id

  # Callbacks
  before_validation :town_ids_exist

  def town_ids_exist
    validate_town 'town_current', self.town_current_id
    validate_town 'town_home', self.town_home_id
  end

  def validate_town(field, id)
    town = town_exists id

    if town.nil?
      send "#{field}_id=", nil
      send "#{field}=", nil
    else
      send "#{field}=", town.city
    end
  end

  def town_exists(id)
    Location.find_by_id(id)
  end
end

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Custom callback