find() with nil when there are no records

Question

In my current rails program when I use something like

 user = User.find(10)

When there is no user with ID=10 , I will have exception like :

ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound: Couldn't find User with ID=10

Can I get nil instead of raising exception so when I do something like :

unless user = Challenge.find(10)
  puts "some error msg"         
end

I just want to get nil when there is no records and I don't want to use begin/rescue

Thanks

Answer 1

Yes, just do:

Challenge.find_by_id(10)

For Rails 4 and 5:

Challenge.find_by(id: 10)

Answer 2

In Rails 4, dynamic finders - such as find_by_id which was used in the accepted answer - were deprecated.

Moving forward, you should use the new syntax:

Challenge.find_by id: 10

Answer 3

you can do this a bit hackish, just use the ActiveRecord Query Interface.

this will return nil, instead of raising a Exception

  User.where(:id => 10).first

Answer 4

You can try this Challenge.exists?(10)