Unexpected default error message for anchor's maxLength rule

[Rua-Yuki]

Waterline version: 0.13.6
Node version: 10.14.2
NPM version: 6.4.1
Operating system: macOS 10.13.3

---

There appears to be a very small issue with the default message reported by anchor's maxLength rule. Specifically, with the changes introduced to improve validation error messages (sailshq/anchor@18e0e7f) in v1.4.0, it appears that the length overage is displayed as a negative number.

For example, it's possible to receive something like the following:

Could not use specified `lenTestField`.  Violated one or more validation rules:
  • Value was -4 characters longer than the configured maximum length (2)

The specific issue portion is the "-X characters longer" phrase, which doesn't make much sense.

---

This issue can be reproduced easily given the following model definition and usage code:

/**
 * @file ValidationTestModel.js
 */

module.exports = {

  attributes: {
    lenTestField: {
      type: 'string',
      maxLength: 2,
    },
  }

};

/**
 * Short and simple promise-based code that can be executed in the `sails console`,
 * for your convenience.
 */

ValidationTestModel.create({
    lenTestField: 'potato',
}).catch(err => {
    sails.log.error('Woops:', err);
});

The errant line of code appears to be:
https://github.com/sailshq/anchor/blob/18e0e7fd144f0246cb7cdad5d8501681dc52b41a/lib/rules.js#L262

The specific culprit being that the overage calculation arithmetic is backwards, with maxLength-x.length written rather than x.length-maxLength on two occasions.

As a side-effect of always being negative, the pluralisation logic intended to select between outputting the singular "character" or plural "characters" will not function as expected. Reordering both operations as mentioned above will solve this pluralisation issue bit as well.

---

My apologies for the long and pedantic issue report!

(Also I wasn't certain if I should file this under the main sails repo or this one – sorry if I've goofed up in this regard!)

[sailsbot]

@Rua-Yuki Thanks for posting, we'll take a look as soon as possible.

---

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[Rua-Yuki]

Sidenote / Gotcha: Due to npm's respect for semantic versioning this of course won't affect every project on Waterline 0.13.6. Only projects which have had the latest sailshq/anchor pulled in will be affected by the issue.

[johnabrams7]

@Rua-Yuki Thanks for taking the time to explore this error and providing a simple solution to the discrepancy in the code. PR located here.

[raqem]

Hi @Rua-Yuki,
Thank you for making a pull request to fix the issue!
We are currently in the process of consolidating all of Sails related issues into one repo to help keep better track of issues.
Thanks again!