Readability and cyclomatic complexity of database transaction code I consider these two options exactly the same. I prefer the first one but I'm not sure if it's better than the second option in terms of cyclomatic complexity or readability.

Assuming that this is not pure Ruby and I can call to the try method.

existing_transaction = database.find_transaction_by_id(transaction.id)
database.create_transaction(transaction) unless existing_transaction
database.update_transaction(transaction) unless existing_transaction.try(:processed)




existing_transaction = database.find_transaction_by_id(transaction.id)
if existing_transaction
  unless existing_transaction.processed
    database.update_transaction(transaction)
  end
else
  database.create_transaction(transaction)
end
It's obviously subjective, but IMHO inline conditionals make code harder to understand, indentation is very important. So I'd definitely take the second approach, but writing it differently to use only one indentation level:

existing_transaction = database.find_transaction_by_id(transaction.id)
if !existing_transaction
  database.create_transaction(transaction)
elsif !existing_transaction.processed
  database.update_transaction(transaction)
end