DetectOrCreate

Rails 2.3.9 introduces a change which makes find_or_create_by unusable with a hash as an argument. This gem gives similar functionality, with the added ability to overwrite the existing record that is found.

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'detect_or_create'

Add after the Rails::Initializer block:

require 'detect_or_create'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install detect_or_create

Find user with email "user@domain.com" or create a new user with that email and additional attributes:

User.detect_or_create(:by => { :email => "user@domain.com" },
                      :with => { :name => "User", :active => true })

Just including the by argument will also work if you don't need additional attributes.

User.detect_or_create(:by => { :email => "user@domain.com" })

You can also modify what was found:

User.detect_or_create(:by => { :email => "user@domain.com" },
                      :with => { :name => "Domain User 1",
                                 :email => "user1@domain.com"},
                      :overwrite_existing => true)

$ rspec spec/detect_or_create_spec.rb

1. Fork it ( http://github.com/SHUSA/detect_or_create/fork )
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create new Pull Request