How to check if a record exists before creating a new one in rails3?

Question

Heres what I\'m trying to accomplish:

• I have a tagging system in place.
• Tags are created, when Posts are created (posts has_many :tags, :through => :tag

Answer 1

There's a find_or_create_by_ function built right in to Rails

# No 'Summer' tag exists
Tag.find_or_create_by_name("Summer") # equal to Tag.create(:name => "Summer")

# Now the 'Summer' tag does exist
Tag.find_or_create_by_name("Summer") # equal to Tag.find_by_name("Summer")

http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveRecord/Base.html (under Dynamic attribute-based finders)