Just a little amend to your “Handle errors gracefully” example. You can write even shorter and with less pain.

Given:

def offer_for_want
@have_item = HaveItem.find(params[:id])
…
end

You can easily convert it into

def offer_for_want
@have_item = HaveItem.find(params[:id])
…
rescue ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound
flash[:error] = “Some error”
redirect_to :somewhere
end

Note that there’s no explicit begin / end for rescue.