[ruby-on-rails] Rails Active Record find(:all, :order => ) issue

I seem to be unable to use the ActiveRecord::Base.find option :order for more than one column at a time.

For example, I have a "Show" model with date and attending columns.

If I run the following code:

@shows = Show.find(:all, :order => "date")

I get the following results:

[#<Show id: 7, date: "2009-04-18", attending: 2>, 
 #<Show id: 1, date: "2009-04-18", attending: 78>, 
 #<Show id: 2, date: "2009-04-19", attending: 91>, 
 #<Show id: 3, date: "2009-04-20", attending: 16>,
 #<Show id: 4, date: "2009-04-21", attending: 136>]

If I run the following code:

@shows = Show.find(:all, :order => "attending DESC")

[#<Show id: 4, date: "2009-04-21", attending: 136>,
 #<Show id: 2, date: "2009-04-19", attending: 91>,
 #<Show id: 1, date: "2009-04-18", attending: 78>,
 #<Show id: 3, date: "2009-04-20", attending: 16>,
 #<Show id: 7, date: "2009-04-18", attending: 2>]

But, if I run:

@shows = Show.find(:all, :order => "date, attending DESC")

OR

@shows = Show.find(:all, :order => "date, attending ASC")

OR

@shows = Show.find(:all, :order => "date ASC, attending DESC")

I get the same results as only sorting by date:

 [#<Show id: 7, date: "2009-04-18", attending: 2>, 
 #<Show id: 1, date: "2009-04-18", attending: 78>, 
 #<Show id: 2, date: "2009-04-19", attending: 91>, 
 #<Show id: 3, date: "2009-04-20", attending: 16>,
 #<Show id: 4, date: "2009-04-21", attending: 136>]

Where as, I want to get these results:

[#<Show id: 1, date: "2009-04-18", attending: 78>,
#<Show id: 7, date: "2009-04-18", attending: 2>, 
 #<Show id: 2, date: "2009-04-19", attending: 91>, 
 #<Show id: 3, date: "2009-04-20", attending: 16>,
 #<Show id: 4, date: "2009-04-21", attending: 136>]

This is the query being generated from the logs:

[4;35;1mUser Load (0.6ms)[0m   [0mSELECT * FROM "users" WHERE ("users"."id" = 1) LIMIT 1[0m
[4;36;1mShow Load (3.0ms)[0m   [0;1mSELECT * FROM "shows" ORDER BY date ASC, attending DESC[0m
[4;35;1mUser Load (0.6ms)[0m   [0mSELECT * FROM "users" WHERE ("users"."id" = 1) [0m

Finally, here is my model:

  create_table "shows", :force => true do |t|
    t.string   "headliner"
    t.string   "openers"
    t.string   "venue"
    t.date     "date"
    t.text     "description"
    t.datetime "created_at"
    t.datetime "updated_at"
    t.decimal  "price"
    t.time     "showtime"
    t.integer  "attending",   :default => 0
    t.string   "time"
  end

What am I missing? What am I doing wrong?

UPDATE: Thanks for all your help, but it seems that all of you were stumped as much as I was. What solved the problem was actually switching databases. I switched from the default sqlite3 to mysql.

Make sure to check the schema at the database level directly. I've gotten burned by this before, where, for example, a migration was initially written to create a :datetime column, and I ran it locally, then tweaked the migration to a :date before actually deploying. Thus everyone's database looks good except for mine, and the bugs are subtle.

This might help too:

Post.order(created_at: :desc)

I understand why the Rails devs went with sqlite3 for an out-of-the-box implementation, but MySQL is so much more practical, IMHO. I realize it depends on what you are building your Rails app for, but most people are going to switch the default database.yml file from sqlite3 to MySQL.

Glad you resolved your issue.

I am using rails 6 and Model.all(:order 'columnName DESC') is not working. I have found the correct answer in OrderInRails

This is very simple.

@variable=Model.order('columnName DESC')

It is good that you've found your solution. But it is an interesting problem. I tried it out myself directly with sqlite3 (not going through rails) and did not get the same result, for me the order came out as expected.

What I suggest you to do if you want to continue digging in this problem is to start the sqlite3 command-line application and check the schema and the queries there:

This shows you the schema: .schema

And then just run the select statement as it showed up in the log files: SELECT * FROM "shows" ORDER BY date ASC, attending DESC

That way you see if:

1. The schema looks as you want it (that date is actually a date for instance)
2. That the date column actually contains a date, and not a timestamp (that is, that you don't have a time of the day that messes up the sort)

The problem is that date is a reserved sqlite3 keyword. I had a similar problem with time, also a reserved keyword, which worked fine in PostgreSQL, but not in sqlite3. The solution is renaming the column.

See this: Sqlite3 activerecord :order => "time DESC" doesn't sort

I just ran into the same problem, but I manage to have my query working in SQLite like this:

@shows = Show.order("datetime(date) ASC, attending DESC")

I hope this might help someone save some time

Could be two things. First,

This code is deprecated:

Model.find(:all, :order => ...)

should be:

Model.order(...).all

Find is no longer supported with the :all, :order, and many other options.

Second, you might have had a default_scope that was enforcing some ordering before you called find on Show.

Hours of digging around on the internet led me to a few useful articles that explain the issue:

• http://m.onkey.org/active-record-query-interface
• http://www.simonecarletti.com/blog/2010/07/the-way-to-rails-3/

isn't it only :order => 'column1 ASC, column2 DESC'?