ActiveRecord::HealthCheck

Validate an ActiveRecord model and all its associations in one call. ActiveRecord::HealthCheck walks your object graph recursively and returns a list of every validation error it finds -- even errors buried deep in nested associations.

This is useful for catching invalid records that might otherwise go unnoticed. For example, a User might be valid, but one of their Posts could have a blank title, or a Tag on that post could be missing its name. health_check will find all of those problems at once.

Add the gem to your Gemfile:

gem "active_record-health_check"

Then run:

bundle install

In a Rails application, no configuration is needed. The gem includes a Railtie that automatically adds a health_check method to every ActiveRecord model.

user = User.find(1)
user.health_check
# => []
# An empty array means everything is valid!

If there are validation errors, you get back an array of hashes describing each problem:

user.health_check
# => [{ class: "Post", id: 12, error_messages: "Title can't be blank" }]

Sometimes you want to skip certain associations. Pass them with the skips: parameter:

user.health_check(skips: [:posts])

This will check the user and all their associations except posts. You can pass symbols or strings:

user.health_check(skips: ["posts", "profile"])

ActiveRecord::HealthCheck traverses all of a model's associations. Supported association types:

• has_many
• has_one
• belongs_to
• has_and_belongs_to_many
• has_many :through
• has_one :through
• Polymorphic associations (has_many :comments, as: :commentable)

health_check returns an array of hashes. Each hash represents one invalid record and has three keys:

When everything is valid, you get an empty array ([]).

Here is an example with multiple errors:

user.health_check
# => [
#   { class: "Post", id: 3, error_messages: "Title can't be blank" },
#   { class: "Tag", id: 7, error_messages: "Name can't be blank" },
#   { class: "Profile", id: 1, error_messages: "Bio can't be blank" }
# ]

• Ruby >= 2.7.0
• Rails >= 6.0

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.