Simple way of turning off observers during rake task?

Rails 3.1 finally comes with API for this:http://api.rubyonrails.org/v3.1.0/classes/ActiveModel/ObserverArray.html#method-i-disable

ORM.observers.disable :user_observer  # => disables the UserObserverUser.observers.disable AuditTrail  # => disables the AuditTrail observer for User notifications.  #    Other models will still notify the AuditTrail observer.ORM.observers.disable :observer_1, :observer_2  # => disables Observer1 and Observer2 for all models.ORM.observers.disable :all  # => disables all observers for all models.User.observers.disable :all do  # all user observers are disabled for  # just the duration of the blockend

Where ORM could for example be ActiveRecord::Base

You could add an accessor to your user model, something like "skip_activation" that wouldn't need to be saved, but would persist through the session, and then check the flag in the observer. Something like

class User  attr_accessor :skip_activation  #whateverend

Then, in the observer:

def after_save(user)  return if user.skip_activation  #rest of stuff to send emailend

As a flag for the observer I like to define a class accessor called "disabled" so it reads like this:

class ActivityObserver < ActiveRecord::Observer  observe :user  # used in tests to disable the observer on demand.  cattr_accessor(:disabled)end

I put it as a condition in the sensitive callbacks

def after_create(record)       return if ActivityObserver.disabled       # do_somethingend

and I just turn the flag on when needed

ActivityObserver.disabled=true