Active record always appending "order by created_at desc"

Rails
1

Hello all, I’m having a problem with activerecord and wondering if
anyone else has encountered this. (using rails 1.2.3)

I’m doing a find all and adding my own :order option, but whatever I
add, AR still adds another “created_at desc” to the end of the order
list. This is causing the query to blow up when created_at is ambiguous.

This is the query:
@user.notes.find(:all, :include =>
[:project],:order=>“notes.created_at”).each do |note|

and the sql ends up like this:

ActiveRecord::StatementInvalid (Mysql::Error: Column ‘created_at’ in
order clause is ambiguous: SELECT notes.id AS t0_r0, notes.user_id
AS t0_r1, notes.project_id AS t0_r2, notes.body AS t0_r3,
notes.created_at AS t0_r4, notes.updated_at AS t0_r5, projects.id
AS t1_r0, projects.name AS t1_r1, projects.position AS t1_r2,
projects.user_id AS t1_r3, projects.description AS t1_r4,
projects.state AS t1_r5, projects.created_at AS t1_r6,
projects.updated_at AS t1_r7, projects.default_context_id AS t1_r8
FROM notes LEFT OUTER JOIN projects ON projects.id = notes.project_id
WHERE (notes.user_id = 1) ORDER BY notes.created_at, created_at DESC)

poking around Active record, I found this code from base.rb, which
appends an order by from the scope, but in the case above where is the
scope coming from?

    def add_order!(sql, order, scope = :auto)
      scope = scope(:find) if :auto == scope
      scoped_order = scope[:order] if scope
      if order
        sql << " ORDER BY #{order}"
        sql << ", #{scoped_order}" if scoped_order
      else
        sql << " ORDER BY #{scoped_order}" if scoped_order
      end
    end
2

James K. wrote:

WHERE (notes.user_id = 1) ORDER BY notes.created_at, created_at DESC)
Does the declaration of the notes association in the Order model
have a :order option?

–
We develop, watch us RoR, in numbers too big to ignore.

3

Thanks for replying. I believe it does. Is there a way to deactivate or
override that ordering for the purpose of this query?

Mark Reginald J. wrote:

James K. wrote:

WHERE (notes.user_id = 1) ORDER BY notes.created_at, created_at DESC)
Does the declaration of the notes association in the Order model
have a :order option?

–
We develop, watch us RoR, in numbers too big to ignore.

4

On Mar 31, 11:37 am, James K. [email protected]
wrote:

The error is coming from the :include because your association
doesn’t define the table name.
I believe you want your association to look like

class User
  has_many :notes, :order => "notes.created_at desc"
end

As far as I know you can’t prevent that from scoping all your find
calls;
However, in your case the order is the same in the association as the
find, so, who cares.

Side note, this is harder to read but an alternative solution that
will
stay locked to your note table name if you change it or something
later.

class User
  has_many :notes, :order => "#{Note.table_name}.created_at desc"
end

==
Courtenay
http://blog.caboo.se

5

James wrote:

Thanks for replying. I believe it does. Is there a way to deactivate or
override that ordering for the purpose of this query?

The most simple way would be to declare another identical
but unordered association.

But if you really want to have one association and to leave
the default order option in place, you should be able to do use
reflect_on_association to change the order option, then change it
back. See:

http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk/msg/06a1f5da4203a11d

–
We develop, watch us RoR, in numbers too big to ignore.