Skip all validations on state machine method

Question

I am trying to figure out how to skip validations on a specific instance of an ActiveRecord object when my reservation model transitions on state machine via a rake task. I would like to skip all validations whenever reservation.close! is called. Would hope to call something like reservation.close!(:validate => false). FYI we are using https://github.com/pluginaweek/state_machine for state machine.

Here is a sample of my reservation model.

class Reservation < ActiveRecord::Base
    validates :ride_id, :start_at, :end_at, presence: true
    validate  :proper_custom_price?, allow_nil: true, on: :update
    validate  :dates_valid?
    validate  :dates_make_sense?

    scope :needs_close_transition, lambda { where("end_at < ?", Time.now).where("state" => ["requested", "negotiating", "approved"]) }

    state_machine :initial => 'requested' do

      all_prebooked = ["requested", "negotiating", "approved"]

      event :close do
        transition :from => all_prebooked,
          :to   => "precanceled"
        end

        before_transition :on => [:close] do |reservation|
          reservation.cancel_reason = :admin
        end
     end
end

Here is a sample of my rake task.

namespace :reservation do

  task :close => :environment do
    puts "== close"

    Reservation.needs_close_transition.each do |reservation|
      puts "===> #{reservation.id}"

      begin
        reservation.close!(:validate => false)
      rescue Exception => e
        Airbrake.notify(e, error_message: e.message) if defined?(Airbrake)
      end
    end
end

Answer 1

I had the same problem, however I did not want to alter my current validations, so I checked the state machine code (version 1.2.0) and I found another solution, for your specific case it would be something like:

reservation.close!(false)
reservation.save(validate: false)

That will trigger all callbacks that you have defined in your state machine, and well this solution is working well for me.

Answer 2

When using the state_machine gem, the state attribute is updated before the validations are run, so you can add an unless condition to the validation that tests the current state:

validates :start_at, :end_at, presence: true, unless: Proc.new {state == 'closed'}

If you want more complex logic, pass a method name symbox to unless instead of a proc:

validates :start_at, :end_at, presence: true, unless: :requires_validation?

def requires_validation?
  # complex logic to determine if the record should be validated
end