Rails 3 includes the validates_associated which is automatically called when saving a nested model. The problem with the method is the message is terrible - "Model(s) is invalid"
There have been a few posts attacking this issue for Rails 2:
- http://rpheath.com/posts/412-a-better-validates-associated
- http://pivotallabs.com/users/nick/blog/articles/359-alias-method-chain-validates-associated-informative-error-message
and there are probably more. It would be great to have a better version as described in these posts that is Rails 3 compatible. The main improvement would be to include why the associated model fails.