# Intermittent problem finding records - ever seen this? **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [January 17, 2007, 4:35am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/intermittent-problem-finding-records-ever-seen-this/82060 "2007-01-17T04:35:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![mindel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/bc8723/32.png) [@mindel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mindel)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2007, 4:35am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/intermittent-problem-finding-records-ever-seen-this/82060/1 "2007-01-17T04:35:12Z")
I’m pulling my hair out. And I don’t have that much to start with. If anyone can give me any ideas or pointers, I’d REALLY appreciate it. My rails app is intermittently having problems finding records of 2 of my models. I’m on Rails 1.1.6, ruby 1.8.5, Apache 2.0.52 and Postgres 8.1.4 on Redhat Linux hosted at Rimu. 1. I sometimes get “Couldn’t find Address with ID=4”. This problem has happened in a couple different places in my code, where I’m finding Addresses. It _usually_ happens on the same address record (there are 2 that it has trouble finding more often than others). I can’t find anything odd about those addresses. My Address model is pretty straightforward: class Address \< ActiveRecord::Base validates\_numericality\_of :zip, :only\_integer =\> true validates\_presence\_of :street\_1, :city, :state, :zip belongs\_to :user has\_many :availabilities # Plus a few methods, but no callbacks. end 1. In another case, it can’t find records of my Zipcode model. I _think_ I eliminated the problem in one spot by adding logging statements – how strange is that? This code caused the error pretty consistently: This somehow caused the error to stop happening in this part of the code at least. Note the added log statements. pickup\_address = Address.find(item.pickup\_location) logger.error(“Found pickup\_address: #{pickup\_address.id}”) ``` item_zip = Zipcode.find_by_zipcode(pickup_address.zip) logger.error("item_zip: #{item_zip}") ``` Any ideas?? Ever seen a similar problem? - Ryan ---
**Author:** ![mindel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/bc8723/32.png) [@mindel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mindel)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2007, 4:04am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/intermittent-problem-finding-records-ever-seen-this/82060/2 "2007-01-18T04:04:02Z")
Well, still haven’t figured out the problem, but I think I found a way to workaround it. In the main place in my code where it can’t find Address objects of Items, I used a begin/rescue that retries a few times. I see in the logs that it is still happening, but it finds the records successfully on retry. Would still love to know what’s going on, though. class Item \< ActiveRecord::Base def pickup\_address retries = 0 begin retries += 1 address = Address.find(pickup\_location) rescue logger.error(“ERROR in item.pickup\_address … retry # #{retries}”) retry unless retries \> 5 end end end ---
**Author:** ![mindel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/bc8723/32.png) [@mindel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mindel)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2007, 4:22am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/intermittent-problem-finding-records-ever-seen-this/82060/3 "2007-01-18T04:22:26Z")
I seem to remember this from a very long time ago. I believe that what’s happening is that in this line pickup\_address = Address.find(item.pickup\_location) item.pickup\_location is nil. and nil.id == 4 If you change it to pickup\_address = Address.find( :first, item.pickup\_location ) Out of curiosity, what is item.pickup\_location? Is it an address? If it is, just use pickup\_address = item.pickup\_location anyway. Hopefully that’s on the right track. ---
**Author:** ![mindel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/bc8723/32.png) [@mindel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mindel)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2007, 4:52am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/intermittent-problem-finding-records-ever-seen-this/82060/4 "2007-01-18T04:52:43Z")
Hi Daniel, thanks for the response. None of my Items have a missing pickup\_address (it just happens to error on address #4 a lot, but also #5 and #26.) 🙂 > > Out of curiosity, what is item.pickup\_location? Is it an address? item.pickup\_location is an address.id. This was my first Rails app and I when I started writing it, I never set up has\_many / belongs\_to relationship between Item and Address. Thought about trying that here to see if it would fix things, but I really wanted to figure out the root problem to what I’m seeing. It’s really puzzling me! I’ve combed the forum archives but haven’t seen anything similar. ---
**Author:** ![mindel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/bc8723/32.png) [@mindel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mindel)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2007, 10:31am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/intermittent-problem-finding-records-ever-seen-this/82060/5 "2007-01-18T10:31:58Z")
On 1/18/07, Ryan C. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > about trying that here to see if it would fix things, but I really > wanted to figure out the root problem to what I’m seeing. It’s really > puzzling me! > > I’ve combed the forum archives but haven’t seen anything similar. Hmm… I’m guessing: #1 – There’s a bug in your app. Dig out the query from an exception trace or your logs, ensure sure it makes sense and returns what you expect when run from psql. #2 – Hardware issues Likely to cause intermittent errors. Should be plenty of resources for diagnosing this sort of thing on google, I think. Perhaps you could write something automated that repeatedly dumps the db (or a copy if you can’t take it offline), then compress and finally md5sum the output. Try reinstalling/upgrading pg if the hash changes while your data doesn’t, then talk to the hosting co when there are still issues. #3 – Something weird in your rails/ruby/ruby\<-\>postgres driver/postgres install or configuration. Ouch. No idea… Good luck, Isak