Does ActiveRecord wrap manual queries into a transaction already?

Question

I have a query that begins and ends a transaction like this:

transaction = "BEGIN; UPDATE articles set x = 1 where id = 1; UPDATE articles set x = 2 where id = 2; END;"

ActiveRecord::Base.connection.execute(transaction)  

My question: Do I even need the BEGIN and END? Does ActiveRecord already wrap my query into a transaction?

Answer 1

ActiveRecord provides the transaction method, available on both AR classes and instances, that will wrap queries within a given block. It even supports nested transactions.

You could rewrite your code as:

sql = <<-SQL
UPDATE articles set x = 1 where id = 1; 
UPDATE articles set x = 2 where id = 2;
SQL

ActiveRecord::Base.transaction do
  ActiveRecord::Base.connection.execute(sql)
end