Is it possible to have too many validations?

Question

Does the number of validation ClassMethods have anything to do with the performance of an application? Could a boatload of validations cause a strain?

Answer 1

I would be astonished if validations made any significant impact on performance in any non-trivial application.

And as validations are integral for both user experience and data integrity, they would be one of the last things on my list to be concerned about.

Answer 2

An abundance of validations probably isn't as much of a performance issue as it is a design issue. If you are building an application and you find that you have more than say 10 validations in your classes, this is probably an indication that the class is doing too much.

I'm considering something like validates_presence_of :name, :description, :etc as a single validation.

Answer 3

One typical issue is the way we do the validation. We should check for valid data instead of checking for invalid conditions.