You'll have to ensure that all of the other validations are disabled in order for this to be effective. ActiveRecord cannot selectively disable validations, but can omit them entirely.
For instance:
class Article < ActiveRecord::Base
validate :something,
:if => :validations_are_turned_on?
validate :always
protected
def validations_are_turned_on?
!@validations_disabled
end
end
Tagging any of the non-essential validations with the appropriate :if
condition should work. In this case if @validations_disabled
is not set then all validations will run.