Assert Present accepts empty string with spaces

[Jigyasa Makkar]

assert_present considers " " valid. It should strip the value before testing for empty? I'll submit a PR soon, if I can.

[Michel Martens]

Hey! I understand your point, it looks like it you may need a different assertion, for example assert_format or even something more specific like assert_email, assert_url, etc. I'm not sure assert_present should change its behavior, as it is just following Ruby's rules regarding what is and what is not empty. Otherwise you can use a simple assert like this:

assert !foo.strip.empty?, [:foo, :empty]

Let me know if you are OK using something like assert_format or a bare assert.

[Jigyasa Makkar]

I understand what you mean. I was drawing a parallel with ActiveModel Validations:
validates :attr, presence: true which uses the ActiveSupport method blank? and not empty?. I did already define a custom validator to do it, though.

[Francesco]

We run into the same issue as well when a user was testing our application. We ended-up monkey patching assert_present.

class Scrivener
  BLANK = /\A[[:space:]]*\z/

  def assert_present(att, error = [att, :not_present])
    assert(!(BLANK === send(att).to_s), error)
  end
end

[Damian Janowski]

In my opinion, systems should be designed so that they don't require precise input from users. In most cases, all strings should be trimmed, maybe double spaces converted to a single one, etc. But I think this step should come before the validation layer provided by Scrivener, because you'll want to keep those transformations before passing it to another layer (the database, a service, whatever).

[Michel Martens]

Closing this issue for now. I think eventually we can create a different assertion if the requirement is widespread.