ActiveRecord find and only return selected columns

pluck(column_name)

This method is designed to perform select by a single column as direct SQL query Returns Array with values of the specified column name The values has same data type as column.

Examples:

Person.pluck(:id) # SELECT people.id FROM people
Person.uniq.pluck(:role) # SELECT DISTINCT role FROM people
Person.where(:confirmed => true).limit(5).pluck(:id)

see http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveRecord/Calculations.html#method-i-pluck

Its introduced rails 3.2 onwards and accepts only single column. In rails 4, it accepts multiple columns