named_scope does not show correct columns

Question

Update

I am trying to do is select specific columns and use aliases on them, and use it in a named_scope. I want to use aliases because later on I'll use this as an idea when I try to join many tables, based on the SQL that I have created.

Edit: Im running in Rails 2.3.8 and Ruby 1.8.7

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Here is my named_scope...

named_scope :prog_result,:select => "users.id AS 'user_id', users.username AS 'username', users.lastname AS 'lastname', users.firstname AS 'firstname', departments.name AS 'department', versions.number AS 'version'", 
                         :joins => {:department => :version}

And when I try to call it in console User.prog_result the result is this...

[#<User username: "respondent1", lastname: "res", firstname: "pon">, #<User username: "2222", lastname: "Numero", firstname: "Dos">]

User.prog_result.find(2) 2 is the id of the user "respondent1", the result of User.prog_result.inspect is this

"[#<User username: \"respondent1\", lastname: \"res\", firstname: \"pon\">, #<User username: \"2222\", lastname: \"Numero\", firstname: \"Dos\">]"

Can someone tell me what am I doing wrong?..

Answer 1

When you call User.prog_result in the console, you are really calling User.prog_result.inspect The console is displays the result by calling #inspect on the result object.

If instead you called User.prog_result.class in the console, you'd see that it was an ActiveRecord::NamedScope::Scope.

If you poke inside these objects that are being returned, you'll probably find what you are expecting.

User.prog_result.first.department => first joined department.name
User.prog_result.last.version   => last joined version.number

Both named scopes and passing :joins, :conditions and :select are deprecated in Rails 3.1, so you should probably not be developing new code with them unless you are on Rails 2.3.x. You'll want to do something like this:

User.joins(:department => :version).
select("users.id AS 'user_id', users.username AS 'username', users.lastname AS 'lastname', users.firstname AS 'firstname', departments.name AS 'department', versions.number AS 'version'")

Answer 2

I'm not quit sure about your question, But I assume you are looking at a User object and rails returns an array.

If thats the case, named_scope will always return an array (just like you do a User.find_all())

even if there is only one record

Hope i got your question right ..

thanks and regards

sameera