# Rails 2.0 error ActiveRecord handling/reporting best practice **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [January 27, 2008, 2:33am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-2-0-error-activerecord-handling-reporting-best-practice/127251 "2008-01-27T02:33:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![acampos](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/919ad9/32.png) [@acampos](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/acampos)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2008, 2:33am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-2-0-error-activerecord-handling-reporting-best-practice/127251/1 "2008-01-27T02:33:44Z")
I’ve included rescue\_from ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound in my application.rb file in order to catch and report all failed ActiveRecord find operations. However, ActiveRecord does not raise this exception from the dynamic finders that it includes in models. So is the best practice to avoid use of the dynamic finders and only use find() instead? Or is it common to make use of the dynamic finders and have my controller raise ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound when a dynamic finder returns nil? Just curious how others typically handle this sort of thing. ---
**Author:** ![acampos](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/919ad9/32.png) [@acampos](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/acampos)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2008, 3:02am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-2-0-error-activerecord-handling-reporting-best-practice/127251/2 "2008-01-27T03:02:38Z")
you can do it to thrown an exception: self.find\_by\_id(id) || ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound and you can also read this discution which is really interesting about the topic : [http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-core/browse\_thread/thread/9b79f15be8cea7ab/465c7b2f24b03363](http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-core/browse_thread/thread/9b79f15be8cea7ab/465c7b2f24b03363)