[ruby-on-rails] Rails find_or_create_by more than one attribute?

There is a handy dynamic attribute in active-record called find_or_create_by:

Model.find_or_create_by_<attribute>(:<attribute> => "")

But what if I need to find_or_create by more than one attribute?

Say I have a model to handle a M:M relationship between Group and Member called GroupMember. I could have many instances where member_id = 4, but I don't ever want more than once instance where member_id = 4 and group_id = 7. I'm trying to figure out if it's possible to do something like this:

GroupMember.find_or_create(:member_id => 4, :group_id => 7)

I realize there may be better ways to handle this, but I like the convenience of the idea of find_or_create.

In Rails 4 you could do:

GroupMember.find_or_create_by(member_id: 4, group_id: 7)

And use where is different:

GroupMember.where(member_id: 4, group_id: 7).first_or_create

This will call create on GroupMember.where(member_id: 4, group_id: 7):

GroupMember.where(member_id: 4, group_id: 7).create

On the contrary, the find_or_create_by(member_id: 4, group_id: 7) will call create on GroupMember:

GroupMember.create(member_id: 4, group_id: 7)

Please see this relevant commit on rails/rails.

For anyone else who stumbles across this thread but needs to find or create an object with attributes that might change depending on the circumstances, add the following method to your model:

# Return the first object which matches the attributes hash
# - or -
# Create new object with the given attributes
#
def self.find_or_create(attributes)
  Model.where(attributes).first || Model.create(attributes)
end

Optimization tip: regardless of which solution you choose, consider adding indexes for the attributes you are querying most frequently.

By passing a block to find_or_create, you can pass additional parameters that will be added to the object if it is created new. This is useful if you are validating the presence of a field that you aren't searching by.

Assuming:

class GroupMember < ActiveRecord::Base
    validates_presence_of :name
end

then

GroupMember.where(:member_id => 4, :group_id => 7).first_or_create { |gm| gm.name = "John Doe" }

will create a new GroupMember with the name "John Doe" if it doesn't find one with member_id 4 and group_id 7

You can do:

User.find_or_create_by(first_name: 'Penélope', last_name: 'Lopez')
User.where(first_name: 'Penélope', last_name: 'Lopez').first_or_create

Or to just initialize:

User.find_or_initialize_by(first_name: 'Penélope', last_name: 'Lopez')
User.where(first_name: 'Penélope', last_name: 'Lopez').first_or_initialize