How do I validate an entity before programmatically saving it?

Question

I have various functions/methods that programmatically create entities (nodes). I just noticed that invalid data has been getting stored in the db though these functions (invalid in that it doesn't meet the rules defined for that field).

How do I validate the data before $entity->save()?

I have seen documentation saying that I simply need to do $entity->validate() and then count if there are any errors; but I have marked a few fields as required and then left them empty in my API function and $entity->validate()->count() is always 0.

What am I missing?

Answer 1

Looking the api it should be simple:

$violations = $entity->validate();
  if ($violations->count() > 0) {
    // Validation failed.
  }