So I'm using ActiveRecord model validations to validate a form in a RESTful application. I have a create action that does: @association = Association.new and the receiving end of the form creates a data hash of attributes from the form parameters to save to the database using: @association = user.associations.create(data) I want to simply render the create action if validation fails. The problem is that the .create (not !) method is throwing an exception in cases where the model validation fails. Example: validates_format_of :url, :with => /(^$)|(^(http|https):\/\/[a-z0-9]+([\-\.]{1}[a-z0-9]+)*\.[a-z]{2,5}(([0-9]{1,5})?\/.*)?$)/ix, :message => "Your url doesn't seem valid." in the model produces: ActiveRecord::RecordInvalid Exception: Validation failed: Url Your url doesn't seem valid. I thought .create! is supposed throw an exception whereas .create is not. Am I missing something here? Ruby 1.8.7 patchlevel 173 & rails 2.3.3