There is some bit of history here. The purpose of update_attribute was to be able to touch an attribute fast, set a flag for example... something you know can go straight to the database. Indeed, update_attribute has *never* run validations.
There was some discussion about this method for Rails 3 because if the goal was to bypass stuff to be fast it didn't felt consistent to still go through the callbacks. And for some time update_attribute skipped also callbacks in edge: https://github.com/rails/rails/commit/01629d180468049d17a8be6900e27a4f0d2b18c4 though it still touched updated_at, so fast but not quite there. That method is so popular, however, that the change felt too risky because it was subtle, and that was reverted just before shipping: https://github.com/rails/rails/commit/30ea923040ded944209c98383389b6c9aafe806a In the end, in 3.1 it was decided to introduce instead a new method update_column. That is the fast one. Given the current status of things, I personally agree that running validations in update_attribute in Rails 4 would be a good idea. Let's see what other core team members think though. Thoughts? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby on Rails: Core" group. To post to this group, send email to rubyonrails-core@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rubyonrails-core+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-core?hl=en.
