Question

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Model.find(1) gives ActiveRecord error when id 1 does not exist

If there is no user with an id of 1 in the database, trying User.find(1) will raise an exception.

Why is this?

Answer 1

Because that’s the way the architects intended find(id) to work, as indicated in the RDoc:

Find by id – This can either be a specific id (1), a list of ids (1, 5, 6), or an array of ids ([5, 6, 10]). If no record can be found for all of the listed ids, then RecordNotFound will be raised.

If you don’t want the exception to be raised, use find_by_id, which will return nil if it can’t find an object with the specified id. Your example would then be User.find_by_id(1).