RoR Gotchas

So today I was working on re-factoring an application that I was handed. The application had everything plugged in the controller initially so in the name of MVC I started to move things to the model file. While in the model I had a method that looked like this:

  def self.find_applications(params)
    composed_cond = Caboose::EZ::Condition.new
    
      cond_three_letter_code = Caboose::EZ::Condition.new :programs do 
          three_letter_code  === params[:find_only_program_codes]
      end
      
      cond_status = Caboose::EZ::Condition.new :study_abroad_applications do
        status === params[:find_only_statuses].
                   to_s.downcase.gsub(" ", "").gsub(",", ";").split(";")
      end
      
      cond_terms = Caboose::EZ::Condition.new :deadlines do
        term_year === params[:find_only_terms].
                      to_s.downcase.gsub(" ", "").gsub(",", ";").split(";")        
      end
    
    composed_cond << cond_three_letter_code
    composed_cond << cond_terms
    composed_cond << cond_status

    @applications = StudyAbroadApplication.find(:all, 
                    :include=>[{:deadline => :program}, :user],
                    :conditions => composed_cond.to_sql, :order => "deadlines.id")
 
 unless @applications == 0
  puts "Size: #{@applications.size}"
 else
      flash[:notice] = "There was an error retrieving your application records"
     redirect_to :action => "index"
 end
end

With me being a noob to RoR I completely forgot about my background in procedure based programing and thought nothing of the last statement. Hell if it puts out the size of the array thats what I wanted right? Well that was what I got, but what I didn't get was the @applications array that I wanted to display in my view. So there you have it just make sure that the last thing in your method is what you want to return. Learn from my mistakes and save your self some tail chasing. :)

-CH