Having an issue with a stored procedure SQL-Server - sql

Question

I've got a stored procedure that i'm having some issues with.
I'm trying to lookup against my table GOTWVotes and if VotedBy hasn't voted before write the vote to the table(this is working) however if VotedBy has voted before not to write to the table and return VoteCount as 1.
Although it doesn't write to the table when VotedBy exists the value of VoteCountalways appears to be 0
Any help would be appreciated
CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[Votes]
#VotedMember BIGINT,
#VotedBy BIGINT
AS
DECLARE #votecount INT
BEGIN TRY
BEGIN TRANSACTION t_Transaction
SELECT TOP 1 * FROM [GOTWVotes] WITH (TABLOCKX)
SELECT #votecount = COUNT(*) FROM [dbo].[GOTWVotes]
WHERE [VotedBy] = #VotedBy
IF #votecount = 0
INSERT INTO
[dbo].[GOTWVotes] ([VotedMember],[VotedBy])
VALUES
(#VotedMember, #VotedBy)
COMMIT TRANSACTION t_Transaction
END TRY
BEGIN CATCH
SET #votecount = -1
ROLLBACK TRANSACTION t_Transaction
END CATCH
RETURN #votecount

Answer 1

You can do following code
CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[Votes]
#VotedMember BIGINT,
#VotedBy BIGINT,
#votecount INT OUTPUT
AS
BEGIN TRY
BEGIN TRANSACTION t_Transaction
SET #votecount = 0
IF NOT EXISTS(SELECT 1 FROM [dbo].[GOTWVotes]
WHERE [VotedBy] = #VotedBy)
BEGIN
INSERT INTO
[dbo].[GOTWVotes] ([VotedMember],[VotedBy])
VALUES
(#VotedMember, #VotedBy)
END
ELSE
BEGIN
SELECT #votecount = COUNT(*) FROM [dbo].[GOTWVotes]
WHERE [VotedBy] = #VotedBy
END
COMMIT TRANSACTION t_Transaction
END TRY
BEGIN CATCH
SET #votecount = -1
ROLLBACK TRANSACTION t_Transaction
END CATCH
To Call above Stored procedure you need to write following code
DECLARE #votecount int
EXEC dbo.Votes #VotedMember = 0, -- bigint
#VotedBy = 0, -- bigint
#votecount = #votecount OUTPUT -- int
SELECT #votecount

Answer 2

This seems so complicated. I am thinking something like this:
CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[Votes] (
#VotedMember BIGINT,
#VotedBy BIGINT,
#retval int output
)
BEGIN
INSERT INTO dbo.GOTWVotes (VotedMember, VotedBy)
SELECT v.VotedMember, v.VotedBy
FROM (VALUES (#VotedMember, #VotedBy)) v(VotedMember, VotedBy)
WHERE NOT EXISTS (SELECT 1
FROM dbo.GOTWVotes gwv
WHERE gwv.VotedBy = v.VotedBy
);
SET #retval = ##ROWCOUNT;
END;
I suspect that what you want to do could also be handled with constraints.