Is this overkill? Is there some other nice way to do this?

validates_deeply.rb

class ValidatesDeeply
  Failure = Struct.new(:model, :message)
  Result = Struct.new(:valid?, :failures)

  def validate(model, visited = Set.new)
    return Result.new(true) if visited.include?(model)
    visited.add(model)

    combine_results(Result.new(model.valid?, extract_failures(model)), *validate_associations(model, visited))
  end

  private

  def combine_results(*results)
    Result.new(results.all?(&:valid?), results.flat_map(&:failures).compact)
  end

  def extract_failures(model)
    model.errors.full_messages.map { |message| Failure.new(model, message) }
  end

  SKIP_ASSOCIATED_TABLES = %w[
    active_storage_attachments
    active_storage_blobs
    active_storage_variant_records
  ].freeze

  def validate_associations(model, visited)
    model.class.reflect_on_all_associations.reject { |assoc|
      assoc.is_a?(ActiveRecord::Reflection::BelongsToReflection) ||
        assoc.is_a?(ActiveRecord::Reflection::ThroughReflection) ||
        SKIP_ASSOCIATED_TABLES.include?(assoc.table_name)
    }.flat_map do |association|
      associated_records = model.send(association.name)
      validate_association(associated_records, visited)
    end
  end

  def validate_association(associated, visited)
    case associated
    when ActiveRecord::Base
      validate(associated, visited)
    when Enumerable
      associated.map { |record| validate(record, visited) }
    else
      Result.new(true)
    end
  end
end

I have a back-end CMS of a number of entities that take the admin a month to fully complete, so saving each layer of six related associations without serious validation of the associated records is very important as so much is WIP, so validates_associated would be onerous. However, as the scheduled publish date draws near, the system needs to surface all the ways in which the data is in good or bad shape.

To that ends, I built a (not pictured here) PORO that does a few dozen such health checks on the root model of interest, but as a last sanity check I also wanted to make sure that "if they were saved today" (potentially a month later, with any applicable code/migration changes that had occurred since creation), all of the associated records would still be considered valid, and—if not—surface that information in the health check too.

So roughly: HighLevelThing -> lots of DependentAssociatedModels's, we don't necessarily care about Serious Validation™ until HighLevelModel flips some published? bit/enum.

There might still be a vanilla Rails approach:

#pseudo-rails code, obvs

class HighLevelThing
  has_many :whatevers
  validates_associated :whatevers, if: :published?
end

class Whatever
  belongs_to :high_level_thing

  # serious validation saved for high level publishing
  validates :whatever, if: -> { high_level_thing.published? }
end

Definitely a matter of taste—I'm sure ValidatesDeeply does the thing you want it to, but 6+ months out I know which code I'd rather have forgotten. 😅