# Checking for duplicates, if duplicate, concate duplicate **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [February 22, 2008, 2:26am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/checking-for-duplicates-if-duplicate-concate-duplicate/129853 "2008-02-22T02:26:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![pood](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@pood](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/pood)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2008, 2:26am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/checking-for-duplicates-if-duplicate-concate-duplicate/129853/1 "2008-02-22T02:26:55Z")
Here’s the break down. 2 models: song, artist artists has many songs. Is there already a pre-built method in rails that can check for duplicate artists, and if the artist already exists, it will add the song object instead of creating a new artist? If there isn’t I can write the method, would you write this in the model or the controller? Basically it would do this. grabs the artist[:name] params, do a find\_by\_name, if it finds it, then it will do concate with the song object, otherwise, it would create a new artist id. ---
**Author:** ![pood](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@pood](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/pood)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2008, 1:05pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/checking-for-duplicates-if-duplicate-concate-duplicate/129853/2 "2008-02-22T13:05:46Z")
Feng T., > grabs the artist[:name] params, do a find\_by\_name, if it finds it, > then > …, otherwise, it would create a new artist id. try : a = Artist.find\_or\_create\_by\_name(params[:name]) Alain