Question

I’m writing a little browser game as a project to learn RoR with and I’m quite new to it.

This is a little method that’s called regularly by a cronjob.

I’m guessing there should be some way of adding elements to the potions array and then doing a bulk save at the end, I’m also not liking hitting the db each time in the loop to get the number of items for the market again.

def self.restock_energy_potions   market = find_or_create_market    potions = EnergyPotion.find_all_by_user_id(market.id)    while (potions.size < 5)     potion = EnergyPotion.new(:user_id => market.id)     potion.save     potions = EnergyPotion.find_all_by_user_id(market.id)   end     end 

Answer 1

I’m not sure I’m understanding your question. Are you looking for something like this?

def self.restock_energy_potions   market = find_or_create_market      potions = EnergyPotion.find_all_by_user_id(market.id)   (potions.size...5).each {EnergyPotion.new(:user_id => market.id).save }   end     end 

Note the triple dots in the range; you don’t want to create a potion if there are already 5.

Also, if your potions were linked (e.g. by has_many) you could create them through the market.potions property (I’m guessing here, about the relationship between users and markets–details depend on how your models are set up) and save them all at once. I don’t think the data base savings would be significant though.