Deprecate uses of `validates presence: false`

rubyonrails-core
1

Active Record validations support passing false (for example, validates presence: false) for a long ago (Don't enable validations when passing false hash values to ActiveMode… · rails/rails@b3ccd7b · GitHub).

It was originally intended to mean that when we use validates presence: false we mean that don’t use this validation. But it sounds to me more like “validate that it is not present (aka absent)”.

So my colleague just yet implemented a feature using this presence: false thinking that it will act like absence: true.

I haven’t ever seen usage of this style, so not sure how it is currently useful. But this can lead to confusion and bugs.

What do people think about deprecating passing false/nil for now and raising for such values in the future?

2

The true/false value could technically not be hardcoded and be set via external config or some other means, so allowing both true and false should always be valid.

3

I second this what @akaspick said - we have a system which is highly configurable, and deployed for many customers.

While I agree that verbatim validates :email, presence: false does not make any sense, imagine something like validates :email, presence: CONFIG[:email_required] .