Doing a SQL sum and getting the result into rails

Rails
1

All,

I am trying to execute the following SQL code and have the result
returned to my application for further proessing…

“select SUM(action) as ‘sum’ from approvals where upload_id = ?”,
@upload.id

I have tried this in a Approval.find_by_sql also as a
Approval.connection.execute, but I can’t seem to get the data back
into rails… How can I access the returned data, which should be a
single number? I tried @points.sum, @points, etc. I want to do some
numerical comparisons on this, so I need the number, and just the
number.

Oh, and action can be any number from -3 to 3, so I can’t just do a
count…

Any ideas?

Thanks!

2

Approval.sum ‘action’, :conditions => [‘upload_id = ?’, @upload.id]
should do the trick.

If you go down the road of writing out the sql by hand (not necessary
here, but things aren’t always as simple) then you can use
Approval.connection.select_values

Fred