Rails raw SQL example

Question

You can do this:

sql = "Select * from ... your sql query here"
records_array = ActiveRecord::Base.connection.execute(sql)

records_array would then be the result of your sql query in an array which you can iterate through.

I know this is old... But I was having the same problem today and found a solution:

Model.find_by_sql

If you want to instantiate the results:

Client.find_by_sql("
  SELECT * FROM clients
  INNER JOIN orders ON clients.id = orders.client_id
  ORDER BY clients.created_at desc
")
# => [<Client id: 1, first_name: "Lucas" >, <Client id: 2, first_name: "Jan">...]

---

Model.connection.select_all('sql').to_hash

If you just want a hash of values:

Client.connection.select_all("SELECT first_name, created_at FROM clients
   WHERE id = '1'").to_hash
# => [
  {"first_name"=>"Rafael", "created_at"=>"2012-11-10 23:23:45.281189"},
  {"first_name"=>"Eileen", "created_at"=>"2013-12-09 11:22:35.221282"}
]

Result object:

select_all returns a result object. You can do magic things with it.

result = Post.connection.select_all('SELECT id, title, body FROM posts')
# Get the column names of the result:
result.columns
# => ["id", "title", "body"]

# Get the record values of the result:
result.rows
# => [[1, "title_1", "body_1"],
      [2, "title_2", "body_2"],
      ...
     ]

# Get an array of hashes representing the result (column => value):
result.to_hash
# => [{"id" => 1, "title" => "title_1", "body" => "body_1"},
      {"id" => 2, "title" => "title_2", "body" => "body_2"},
      ...
     ]

# ActiveRecord::Result also includes Enumerable.
result.each do |row|
  puts row['title'] + " " + row['body']
end

Sources:

1. ActiveRecord - Findinig by SQL.
2. Ruby on Rails - Active Record Result .

You can execute raw query using ActiveRecord. And I will suggest to go with SQL block

query = <<-SQL 
  SELECT * 
  FROM payment_details
  INNER JOIN projects 
          ON projects.id = payment_details.project_id
  ORDER BY payment_details.created_at DESC
SQL

result = ActiveRecord::Base.connection.execute(query)

You can do direct SQL to have a single query for both tables. I'll provide a sanitized query example to hopefully keep people from putting variables directly into the string itself (SQL injection danger), even though this example didn't specify the need for it:

@results = []
ActiveRecord::Base.connection.select_all(
  ActiveRecord::Base.send(:sanitize_sql_array, 
   ["... your SQL query goes here and ?, ?, ? are replaced...;", a, b, c])
).each do |record|
  # instead of an array of hashes, you could put in a custom object with attributes
  @results << {col_a_name: record["col_a_name"], col_b_name: record["col_b_name"], ...}
end

Edit: as Huy said, a simple way is ActiveRecord::Base.connection.execute("..."). Another way is ActiveRecord::Base.connection.exec_query('...').rows. And you can use native prepared statements, e.g. if using postgres, prepared statement can be done with raw_connection, prepare, and exec_prepared as described in https://stackoverflow.com/a/13806512/178651

You can also put raw SQL fragments into ActiveRecord relational queries: http://guides.rubyonrails.org/active_record_querying.html and in associations, scopes, etc. You could probably construct the same SQL with ActiveRecord relational queries and can do cool things with ARel as Ernie mentions in http://erniemiller.org/2010/03/28/advanced-activerecord-3-queries-with-arel/. And, of course there are other ORMs, gems, etc.

If this is going to be used a lot and adding indices won't cause other performance/resource issues, consider adding an index in the DB for payment_details.created_at and for payment_errors.created_at.

If lots of records and not all records need to show up at once, consider using pagination:

• https://www.ruby-toolbox.com/categories/pagination
• https://github.com/mislav/will_paginate

If you need to paginate, consider creating a view in the DB first called payment_records which combines the payment_details and payment_errors tables, then have a model for the view (which will be read-only). Some DBs support materialized views, which might be a good idea for performance.

Also consider hardware or VM specs on Rails server and DB server, config, disk space, network speed/latency/etc., proximity, etc. And consider putting DB on different server/VM than the Rails app if you haven't, etc.