Rails - Jan 2006 - User.already_friend_of(friend)?

I have a User model who HBTM Friends (class User). I would like to check 
for the existance of a user in the friends table before actually adding 
them (in case they were already added as a friend.)

I have a method called already_friend_of?(friend) defined in my User 
model, but I am not sure how to define this method. I simply want to 
check to see if one user is already a friend of another user (I also use 
this method in my views to change the state of some links and buttons - 
for example, the ''add friend'' button becomes ''remove
friend''.)

My method currently looks like this, but it doesn''t seem to be 
working...

def already_friend_of?(friend)
  begin
    self.friends.find(friend)
    true
  rescue
    false
  end
end

I appreciate any hints you can give me regarding this matter.

Thank you,
Ramin

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Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

def already_friend_of?(friend)
  begin
    self.friends.find(friend.id)
    true
  rescue
    false
  end
end

I think this is going to be very expensive because you''re calling this 
method on many pages (and more times per page). If you are just checking 
whether the current (logged in) user has this friend, you''d better 
create a method that gets a list of id''s from the database. These
id''s
are the id''s of her friends.

Then the check method will be:

def friend_of?(friend)
  @friend_ids.include?(friend.id)
end

And you would need a method like load_friend_ids that populates the 
@friend_ids array.

Jules

-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

Thank you Jules. I just forgot the .id part it seems.

I will also take your advice on using the array of id''s .. i did feel 
like it was an expensive call, but wasn''t sure how to go about it. 
thanks again.

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