A more robust solution would be to use Imported Factors. The steps are: 1) download the validation data 2) import it back as an Imported Factor 3) use the imported factor as an AI Factor feature.
We recently made some upgrades to Imported Factors, most crucial is the ability for values to expire (resolve to N/A) after a number of days that you decide. This will make it very robust for the alignment issue, but you can still end up with lots of NAs. You can read about it here: Imported Factor Upgrades (now includes a staleness filter)
The coding is pretty easy. There are several examples to get you started.