How to validate sobject records against existing custom object validation rules using apex?

Question

I am doing bulk cloning of records and modifying some field values and reinserting records inside the future method, As the DML happens in the future method if there are any DML failures due to validation rules, not able to report to the user on UI.

Is there a way in apex, where I can run validation rules against sobject records and know the failures in advance in realtime before pushing it the future method? The object has around 25 validation rules, I don't want to implement again in apex.

I am from ruby on rails background, Rails has a option to validate record beforehand i.e. before actual DML. I am looking for something this way in apex.

Example rails:

user_details = UserDetails.new
user_details.valid?
#=> false
user_details.errors.full_messages
#=> ["Name can't be blank", "Email can't be blank"]
user_details2 = UserDetails.new("Phil", "Phil's email")
user_details2.valid?
#=> true

Answer 1

You would need to manage splitting records into governor-compatible chunks in the UI. Your front end could then make multiple server-side calls (whether you are in Lightning or Visualforce) with individual chunks of records to insert and get back any error details.

What you would gain by this approach is that the future method would not be necessary - you'd insert all of the records synchronously and return any error information to the frontend. What you'd lose is that the entire operation would span multiple transactions, and hence would not be atomic.

Your client-side code would have to be responsible for tracking progress across all of the batches submitted by the frontend, and you'd have to design an approach to manage a kind of "rollback" if some of the records succeeded and others did not. You could do a kind of trial insert followed by a rollback to check validity across all records before inserting any for real, but this is not a perfect guarantee.

Answer 2

The only way to do it would be to actually perform a DML, which presumably defeats the purpose:

SavePoint sp = Database.setSavePoint();
Database.SaveResult[] results = Database.insert(records, false);
sObject[] sendToFuture = new sObject[0];
for(Integer i = 0, s = results.size(); i < s; i++) {
  if(!results[i].isSuccess()) {
    reportAnErrorWith(records[i], results[i]);
  } else {
    sendToFuture.add(records[i].clone(false, false, false));
  }
}
Database.rollback(sp);
futureMethod(sendToFuture);

This is the only way you would get this to work, at which point, you may as well just keep the records inserted and not use the future method.