Hello RoR veterans.
When looking at the following line in in the RoR getting started
guide:
script/generate scaffold Post name:string title:string content:text
My first thought was “Nice!! So they demo string and text. What are
the differences between these two, and what other types are
available?”
So far I’ve seen the following used in various tutorials and blogs:
string, text, integer, boolean, and references.
I just wish there were an actual reference page for this. Like
google made for the AppEngine API:
This (by the way) took me all of 60 seconds to find. I’ve been
searching for a similar guide in RoR all day and haven’t found squat!
Hi Steve,
My first thought was “Nice!! So they demo string and text. What are
the differences between these two, and what other types are
available?”
The types Active Record supports
are :primary_key, :string, :text, :integer, :float, :decimal, :datetime,
:timestamp, :time, :date, :binary, :boolean.
(Source: rails.info )
Also, on api.rubyonrails.org I found the following information pretty
quickly:
Generally speaking, you usually find all you need in the Rails guides
and the API documentation. Now I wish there was some usable way of
finding answers to questions where you don’t know which part of
Rails is doing the magic. I’d love to have some documentation based on
the topic, like this here: PHP: Function Reference - Manual
Newbies (like myself!) also tend to be confused at times when trying
to find out whether our question is a Ruby or a Rails question.
Thankfully the Rails community is pretty friendly. 
Awesome!! Thanks that helps a lot. One follow-up question, if I may:
From what I’ve read, it seems that “references” are only to be used
for “belongs_to” associations? Is it best practice to simply avoid
using “references” and just manually use (for example):
(Using script/generate)
customer_id:integer
(Or manually doing a migration file)
t.customer_id :integer
???
I guess my question is: what is recommended best practice for using
“references”?
Thanks again for your help thortos!
-Steve
There is documentation on the different field types at
Ryan B.
Mocra - Premier iPhone and Ruby on Rails Consultants
w - http://mocra.com
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skype - radarlistener
Thanks Ryan and thortos!
I found a little more information that I was looking for here (as well
as at your links):
Cheers!
-Steve