Hi,

I have a create statement for some models but its creating a record within a join table regardless if the record exist. Here is what my code looks like.

@user = User.find(current_user)
@event = Event.find(params[:id])
for interest in @event.interests
 @user.choices.create(:interest => interest, :score => 4)
end

The problem is it creates records no matter what. I would like it to create a record if it doesnt exist, if a record does exist I would just to it to take the attribute of the found record and add or subtract 1. So, I've been looking around and I see something called find_or_create_by. My question is what happens if it finds? Preferably if it finds,I would like to take the current :score attribute and +1.

SO is it possible to find or create by id? I'm not sure what attribute I would find by since the model I'm looking at is a join model which only had id foreign keys and the score attribute.

I tried

@user.choices.find_or_create_by_user(:user => @user.id, :interest => interest, :score => 4)

but got "undefined method `find_by_user'".....ANy ideas or help?