How would you avoid having to use User.find_by_id(id) || User.find_by_slug(id)

Question

The idea behind Friendly_ID is that you can use a slug or id to retrieve a record. So User.friendly.find(id) will retrieve a record using either the slug or id. If the record isn't found, it raises an error. I want to find the record but return nil if the record is not found. For now, the only way I know of is something like this:

u = User.find_by_id() || User.find_by_slug()

This won't search through old slugs plus it's clunky. Is there a cleaner solution?

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 15 '16 at 20:38

Not optimal but you could try using raw sql in a where method call. Try:

u = User.where("id ='...' or slug ='...')

If you want to avoid raw sql you can use Arel:

users = Arel::Table.new(:users)
u = users.where(users[:id].eq(...).or(users[:slug].eq('...')))

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 15 '16 at 21:29

If you want to have nil as value when the record is not found, you may assign nil in the rescue block like below:

begin
  u = User.friendly.find(id)
rescue ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound
  u = nil
end

As of find documentation, it raises ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound if no record can be found.

But if you don't want to use exception handling, then you may have to use the clunky solution:

u = User.find_by "id = ? or slug = ?", <ID>, <SLUG>

How would you avoid having to use User.find_by_id(id) || User.find_by_slug(id)

2 Answers2