Rails - Apr 2006 - activerecord(mysql) and hash to unique count

I am working with ruby(activerecord) and want to save a ''hash''
of URLs
such that a key is the URL and the value points to a count of how many 
times it occurs after processing a csv file
my question; all I know of is right now is to attempt to save, get a 
unique error and then when handling the exception increment the hash 
value (really a column in a table)

Is this bad?  Or are there better ways?

  begin
      word = NumbersWord.new
      word.word = w.strip
      word.source = url_source
      word.save
  rescue

      puts "ERR: Could not save system word (possible unique error)"
      # Potentially, we need to update the record
      found = NumbersWord.find(:first, :conditions => [ "word = ?",
w ],
:limit => 1)
      if found
        found.occurrence = found.occurrence + 1
        found.save
      end

      # End of Exception
  end

-- 
Berlin Brown
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