Ruby on Rails beginner question : equality - ruby-on-rails

Question

I'm starting to know ROR and I was doing a kind of blog with articles, etc...
I did this code :
def show
id = params[:id]
list = Article.all
is_valid = false
list.all.each do |article|
if article.id == id
#is_valid = true
break
end
end
As you can see, this code just wants to check if the article ID exists or not. So I'm testing equality between id and article.id (which's a model linked to the appropriated table in the database) BUT when I try to use or display #is_valid boolean I saw that article.id == id is FALSE every time, even if article.id = 2 and id = 2. I tried to think about everything that can make this occuring, but I admit I still misunderstand this.
Then I ask you if you know why this is occuring. Of course, an equality like 2 == 2 will change #is_valid to true.
Thank you for your help !

Answer 1

Maybe its because params[:id] it's a string and article.id it's an Integer
(byebug) params
{"controller"=>"admin/my_controller", "action"=>"edit", "id"=>"1"}
And yes it is... "id" is a string "1", so you may try this:
def show
id = params[:id].to_i
list = Article.all
is_valid = false
list.all.each do |article|
if article.id == id
#is_valid = true
break
end
end
end
And maybe could work.
This is the answer to your question,
But if you want to learn a little more about Activerecord you can do this
Article.exists?(params[:id])
and that will do what you are trying to do just with a query against db.
and if you want to get just a simple article
record = Article.find_by(id: params[:id]) #return nil when not exist
if record # if nil will threat like false on ruby
#my code when exist
else
#my code when not exist
end
will work (you also can use find but find will throw an exception ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound when not exists so you have to catch that exception.
Activerecord has many ways to check this you dont need to do it by hand.

Answer 2

def show
#article = Article.find(params[:id])
end
This will create a database query which returns a single row. .find raises a ActiveRecord::NotFound exception if the record is not found. Rails catches this error and shows a 404 page. Article.find_by(id: params[:id]) is the "safe" alternative that does not raise.
Your code is problematic since list = Article.all will load all the records out of the database which is slow and will exhaust the memory on the server if you have enough articles. Its the least effective way possible to solve the task.
If you want to just test for existence use .exists? or .any?. This creates a COUNT query instead of selecting the rows.
Article.where(title: 'Hello World').exists?