How to select where ID in Array Rails ActiveRecord without exception

Question

If it is just avoiding the exception you are worried about, the "find_all_by.." family of functions works without throwing exceptions.

Comment.find_all_by_id([2, 3, 5])

will work even if some of the ids don't exist. This works in the

user.comments.find_all_by_id(potentially_nonexistent_ids)

case as well.

Update: Rails 4

Comment.where(id: [2, 3, 5])

Update: This answer is more relevant for Rails 4.x

Do this:

current_user.comments.where(:id=>[123,"456","Michael Jackson"])

The stronger side of this approach is that it returns a Relation object, to which you can join more .where clauses, .limit clauses, etc., which is very helpful. It also allows non-existent IDs without throwing exceptions.

The newer Ruby syntax would be:

current_user.comments.where(id: [123, "456", "Michael Jackson"])

If you need more control (perhaps you need to state the table name) you can also do the following:

Model.joins(:another_model_table_name)
  .where('another_model_table_name.id IN (?)', your_id_array)

Now .find and .find_by_id methods are deprecated in rails 4. So instead we can use below:

Comment.where(id: [2, 3, 5])

It will work even if some of the ids don't exist. This works in the

user.comments.where(id: avoided_ids_array)

Also for excluding ID's

Comment.where.not(id: [2, 3, 5])