From: Louis J Scoras <louis.j.scoras@...>
Date: 2006-06-23T04:05:02+09:00
Subject: Re: Turning an Array into a Hash based on an attribute value

On 6/22/06, Ashley Moran <work@ashleymoran.me.uk> wrote:
> data_items = DataItem.find(:all)
> # data_items[3].identifier => "my_identifier"
> data_items[:my_identifier].do_something # => data_items[3].do_something


I think your implementation of this looks pretty reasonable, but the
above begs the question, why does he want to do this?  One would think
that you'd be better off just asking ActiveRecord for the correct
object, no?

I'm not sure of the api--i.e.: this is untested--but why not something
like this:

particular_item = DataItem.find_by_identifer("my_identifier")
particular_item.do_something

This is the sort of thing that databases are good at.

-- 
Lou.