Using Rails find_or_initialize_by_email, how to determine if record if found or initialized?

Question

In one of my controllers, I'm doing:

user = User.find_or_initialize_by_email(@omniauth['info']['email'])

I then need to know if the records was found or initialized. I had tried this:

if user
else
end 

But that does not work as there will always be a user. What is the right way to know if find or initialize found or initialized?

Thanks

Answer 1

You should be able to use persisted?:

if user.persisted?

edgeguides.rubyonrails.org says the following about find_or_initialize_by:

The find_or_initialize_by method will work just like find_or_create_by but it will call new instead of create. This means that a new model instance will be created in memory but won't be saved to the database.

Answer 2

An alternative to @pdoherty926's answer is to use the new_record? method.

if user.new_record?

It would return the opposite truthy value from persisted? though, so you have a choice on which works for your conditional logic. (I tend to find if to be more readable than unless sometimes, for example.)