Can we have a find_by, returning nil when not found

[fidalgo]

Instead of having a find that will throw an exception, it would help to have a find_by method, that would have the same behaviour as find_by in rails, where it returns the first match or nil?

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[parndt]

@fidalgo does find_by(slug: params[:id]) work?

[fidalgo]

@parndt
find_by(slug: id) always return nil, when the record exists or not.

I'm using Model.friendly.find_by

[parndt]

Does the below work, without the friendly filter applied?

Model.find_by(slug: params[:id])

My reasoning is that slug should just be a column on your database table so bypassing this library should give the behaviour that you're after. I tried this with an app that I have running friendly_id and it works as expected.

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[fidalgo]

I'm sorry, @parndt but I guess we're having a communication issue here.

With friendly_id gem, I can use the method find with either slug or id, but then the record does not exist, it will raise a record not found an exception.

So my request is to add another method that will mimic the find_by in Rails https://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveRecord/FinderMethods.html#method-i-find_by

so instead of raising an exception is will return nil.

When I run Model.find_by(slug: params[:id]) it works as expected, otherwise, it would be a bug on Rails, what I would like would be to be able to use Model.friendly.find_by(slug: params[:id]) that would return the record or nil.

Please let me know if I'm missing something!

[parndt]

@fidalgo understood, I think. I'm mostly wondering why we need to add that when Rails does it already? 😄 it seems like FriendlyId doesn't need a method for doing what Rails does already. That is why we put our functionality behind .friendly so that you still have Rails' methods available.

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[joemsak]

I found this issue (sup, @parndt how you been) looking for something similar:

For me the idea would be that you don't know if you have primary key ID or slug friendly ID and still want a way to use them interchangeably and just get a nil instead of a raised error:

MyModel.friendly.find_safe(id_or_slug) 
# not saying the method has to be called `find_safe()` but hopefully you get the idea

Does that make sense?

[parndt]

@joemsak I think the idea does make sense in principle, and we could probably support it using something like MyModel.friendly.find(id_or_slug, raise: false)

Then this implementation

friendly_id/lib/friendly_id/finder_methods.rb

Lines 16 to 23 in a33d246

	def find(*args)
	id = args.first
	return super if args.count != 1 || id.unfriendly_id?
	first_by_friendly_id(id).tap { |result| return result unless result.nil? }
	return super if potential_primary_key?(id)
	raise_not_found_exception(id)
	end

could change to raise_not_found_exception(id) if raise.

We would need to formalise the args though away from def find(*args) to def find(id, raise_on_missing: true) or something. I'm not immediately sure what the implication of this would be. I'm not sure what other args find might be expecting.

Super nice to hear from you too, Joe! ❤️

[joemsak]

Yeah, to be sure, my present needs for it almost certainly result from deeper code design issues where the id_or_slug should not be nil in the first place, but it does also seem nice to have a friendly "find by" behavior where you expect a nil when the ID is nil or the record isn't found

[joemsak]

BTW @parndt if you are interested in this idea, would you like me to try a go at a PR?

[parndt]

yes please, I think it'd be good to see if it's feasible, and the idea makes sense. 😄