# Using Find based on method rather than table **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [February 23, 2009, 3:19am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/using-find-based-on-method-rather-than-table/161060 "2009-02-23T03:19:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![jbhruby](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/439d5e/32.png) [@jbhruby](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jbhruby)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2009, 3:19am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/using-find-based-on-method-rather-than-table/161060/1 "2009-02-23T03:19:15Z")
I have a method that returns a date that is either the updated\_at field of a Topic or one of it’s reply Posts. Is there a way to order the results of a find based on the date returned by this method? When I try this: Topic.find(:all, :order =\> ‘lastest\_post\_date DESC’) it throws an error, as it looks for a table rather than using the method I’ve written. There must be an easy way to do this in Ruby! ---
**Author:** ![jbhruby](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/439d5e/32.png) [@jbhruby](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jbhruby)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2009, 4:01am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/using-find-based-on-method-rather-than-table/161060/2 "2009-02-23T04:01:40Z")
Jon H. wrote: > Topic.find(:all, :order =\> ‘lastest\_post\_date DESC’) > > it throws an error, as it looks for a table rather than using the method > I’ve written. > > There must be an easy way to do this in Ruby! Nope! Firstly, this is an ActiveRecord question, and you should always post to the narrowest technical newsgroup for the best answer. Although this particular question is easy, don’t take my follow-up as encouragement to abuse this group! Try the Ruby on Rails Talk forum at Google Group for general AR and RoR questions… In general, find arguments, like :order’s target, must appear in your database. (As a field, not a “table”). That’s because .find’s job is to construct a wicked long SQL SELECT string, and submit this to your database engine - sqlite3, MySQL, etc. They know nothing about Ruby, so they can’t just reach back into your program and find your latest\_post\_date. You could put latest\_post\_date into the database as a field. Do this if you need real speed (unlikely in a young project), or if you need the features discussed below. Next, you could replicate the logic from ‘def latest\_post\_date’, by rebuilding it in a raw SQL fragment. This has odds of working: Topic.find(:all, :include =\> :posts, :order =\> ‘(CASE WHEN topics.created\_at \> posts.created\_at THEN topics.created\_at ELSE posts.created\_at END) DESC’) Crack an SQL tutorial (and _don’t_ pester a Ruby or Rails forum about it!) if that does not work; I wrote it without testing it or nothing. I also only made a guess about the contents of your method. And you might find it easier to simply sort in Ruby, instead of SQL: Topic.all.sort\_by(&:latest\_post\_date) That _will_ reach out to your method! However… One joy of SQL and AR is you can use the :page, :offset, and/or :limit fields to create a “sliding window” of results. Sometimes a query might return too many results for one HTML window, so you should give the user those familiar VCR controls to slide forward and back thru a simulated “database cursor”. And that sliding window obviously will not work if you :limit and :offset your database query, and only _then_ sort it. The VCR controls will not exactly appear to show batches of records in the correct order! Finally, if you indeed need to use the greater of topics.created\_at and posts.created\_at, you could write a Post.after\_save that “bumps” the topics.created\_at field. Then you don’t even need latest\_post\_date.