i''m writing my own generator :) basically a custom scaffolding type thing to make my life easier when creating new resources. instead of doing something like script/generate custom_scaffold MyResource name:string description:string ... i decided to store all the metadata about the tables and fields in the db. my generator creates the model stub files when given a name that corresponds to a table that already exists and which has metadata in the database. i would like to check in my generator code if metadata exists for the table in the DB before going ahead and creating all the views, model, controller, etc.. i''m not sure if this is kosher rails coding to have a generator that depends on the existence of specifc models/tables to work.. but this is just for me and i will make sure they are there whenever i use it.. any ideas? another question.. i have a "m.route_resources file_name.pluralize" line in my generator manifest.. is there anyway i can easily check if the route already exists? if i run my generator multiple times (which is gonna happen a lot since its still in the works) it keeps adding duplicate routes in my routes.rb. Thanks!! happy coding everyone :) Stuart