[Rails-core] Re: Why, again, is it ActiveRecord::Base#update_attribute doesn't trigger validations?

[Jamis Buck]

Lots of people are depending on the current behavior. The method wasn't added arbitrarily, or in a fit of spite, it was extracted from real use, just like the rest of Rails. I use it all the time as a "update this flag in spite of the validations" scenario.

- Jamis

On Mar 4, 2007, at 12:17 PM, eventualbuddha wrote:

I do understand that the naming can be confusing, but it's pretty late in the game to be changing it. It's used as a way to skip validations even inside Rails itself, and changing the behavior of that method would have very far-reaching implications.

I didn't know about this either, and I've read through AR almost in
its entirety. The similar naming of the methods, to me, strongly
implies that they have similar behavior and that the only difference
is that one updates one attribute, the other updates any number of
attributes.

I'm curious as to whether anyone currently depends on
update_attribute's lack of validation and, if so, how should we phase
it into a validating method? One possible way to do it is that if
validation fails, issue a warning stating that the implementation has
changed and that if you want to update without validation to use
attributes= and save(false). The problem with this, of course, is that
people who expect update_attribute to validate will be receiving
spurious warnings. Other suggestions?

-bd

On Mar 4, 8:51 am, "Peter Marklund" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

On Mar 3, 11:29 am, "DHH" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

I was hoping someone could take the time to explain to me why

update_attribute doesn't trigger validations? Why am I concerned with this?

Because it's intended to be used in scenarios where you're not
interested in dealing with validation errors. Such as automatic

functions should not fail just because the object is invalid for
whatever reason.

functions that update a flag or increment a counter at billing. These

I think things should be swapped around, the API should be designed
for the common case which is that you want validation. If you don't
want validation, then do

object.attribute = value
object.save(false)


I think in this case data integrity and the principle of least
surprise should be prioritized.

Of course, this is ultimately a matter of taste and of priorities, but

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