Find_all order question

Rails
#1

How does one properly get find_all to grab the data from the DB table
ordered by a specific column?

For example:

@anglers = Angler.find_all

This code gets all the angler records and they are sorted in order of
the id field which is of course set as a primary key in the DB (mysql).

I’d really like to pull the data from the DB sorted in the order of
another field, for example ‘score’ so I attempted to code:

@anglers = Angler.find_all nil, ‘score’
OR
@anglers = Angler.find_all(nil, ‘score’)

Neither worked and the data continues to be ordered by id. Do I need to
go and make the ‘score’ coumn a secondary key in the DB for this to
work? Or should RoR be doing this on its own? Or is there something else
I’m missing.

Thanks in advance.

#2

Hi –

On Sun, 9 Jul 2006, Mike K. wrote:

I’d really like to pull the data from the DB sorted in the order of
another field, for example ‘score’ so I attempted to code:

@anglers = Angler.find_all nil, ‘score’
OR
@anglers = Angler.find_all(nil, ‘score’)

Neither worked and the data continues to be ordered by id. Do I need to
go and make the ‘score’ coumn a secondary key in the DB for this to
work? Or should RoR be doing this on its own? Or is there something else
I’m missing.

find_all is actually deprecated in favor of find(:all), to which you
can append a SQL fragment for the order, like this:

Angler.find(:all, :order => “score ASC”)

David

–
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has provided just what you need to help you achieve that goal.”
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Complete foreword & sample chapters at http://www.manning.com/black!

#3

Thanks David I tried that and it is still dragging the data out in order
of id not the score field (which is int(5)). I am on MySQL 4.X.
Dadgumit!

#4

Hi Mike,

Mike K. wrote:

How does one properly get find_all to grab the data from the DB table
ordered by a specific column?

For example:

@anglers = Angler.find_all

According to the documentation at http://api.rubyonrails.org/ , the
basics
are:

@anglers = Angler.find(:all, :order => “column_name DESC”)

The default is ascending.

hth,
Bill

#5

Thanks guys I had another statement that was hosing things in the method
I did not show. I am now getting sorted ascending – of course, I need
descending. Is it easy as changing the SQL query?

#6

Never mind - DESC! LOL this is getting better every night. Thank you for
your guidance :wink:

#7

Mike, you might want to take a look at the documentation at
http://api.rubyonrails.org for questions like these. It’s really quite
good.

/ CJ

#8

CJ I have been using the API, although I find it’s syntax difficult to
decipher at times – probably just the learning curve of how Ruby is
specified.

What is the reason for the different syntax styles, aka Entry.find_all
vs Entry.find(:all)?

Why the 2 different styles and where do they come from?

#9

As far as I know, find_all is an old api that has been deprecated,
find(:all) is the recommended way.

-Jonathan.