til/rails/skip-validations-when-creating-a-record.md

Skip Validations When Creating A Record

Validations on your ActiveRecord models are there for a reason. They provide application-level feedback about data that doesn't meet business requirements. In many cases those validations should also be pushed down to the database-layer in the form of constraints.

Sometimes, though rarely and probably only in a testing or development context, you'll want to skip validations.

This is how you can do that when creating a new record:

user = User.new(
  name: 'Josh',
  email: '',
  password: SecureRandom.uuid
)

user.valid?
#=> false
user.errors.messages
#=> {:email=>["can't be blank"]}

user.save(validate: false)

After newing-up an object with invalid data, you can save it with the validate option set to false. This will skip ActiveRecord validations.

Note: If you also have a database-layer constraint, this won't work. Perhaps for your use case you can get by with a new non-persisted record.