Is rails console limiting the query output?

Question

I'm running rails in cloud9 IDE. I'm running a query in the rails console which should just give me all the Users in a user table I have created. This has 100 records However when I run:

User.all

I get

 => #<ActiveRecord::Relation [#<User id: 1, name: "Expedita Eaque", group: 1>, #<User id: 2, name: "Omnis Vel Tempora", group: 3>, #<User id: 3, name: "Incidunt", group: 1>, #<User id: 4, name: "Aliquam", group: 3>, #<User id: 5, name: "Dolorum", group: 1>, #<User id: 6, name: "At", group: 2>, #<User id: 7, name: "Dignissimos", group: 1>, #<User id: 8, name: "Eligendi Amet Ut", group: 1>, #<User id: 9, name: "Corporis Sint", group: 5>, #<User id: 10, name: "Quis Explicabo", group: 1>, ...]> 

which is clearly not 100 records. How can I get rails console to show me all the records instead of truncating with , ...]> ?

Answer 1

User.all Returns an ActiveRecord::Relation object, not the actual results.

To see all the records, you can try

User.all.to_a

This behaviour is purposeful and is created so for performance reasons. You can read more about lazy loading in ORMs to better understand why.

Basically, you need to call a method on the AR relation object which actually needs the underlying data, only then is the query formed and executed.

EDIT

The console works a little differently to your application, in as much as, for any object that's returned in the console, it does an inspection and writes out the truncated output. So basically, it does force the query to run on its own, but shows limited results for viewing ease. To actually see all results, use a method that will force execution of the query and will return the full result set.