Dave says:

I added the following line to the file product.rb in the app/models directory


validates_length_of :title, :minimum => 10

To find the syntax, I looked up the method on http://api.rubyonrails.com You may add an alert message:


validates_length_of :title, :minimum => 10, :message => "at least 10 characters"

Ana says:

You can also use an already implemented error message by using :too_short instead of message. So you can also write: 

validates_length_of :title, :minimum => 10, :too_short

Florent says:


validates_length_of :title, :minimum => 10, :too_short
did not work for me (with Rails 2.3.2), I got in my browser the error /depot/app/models/product.rb:5: syntax error, unexpected '\n', expecting tASSOC I had to specify a message for :too_short: 

validates_length_of :title, :minimum => 10, :too_short => "must have at least %d characters"

Max says:

I’m not sure about the old version of Rails, but you can completely bypass the ”:too_short” part, leaving:


validates_length_of :title, :minimum => 10
h4. Claudio says: In Rails 3 you can now use: 

validates :title, :length => { :minimum => 10 }