I have a timestamp with time zone field named statdate and the entry looks like this 2021-11-17 12:47:54-08. I want to create a field with just the time of day expressed locally, so it would look like 12:47:54. (This data was recorded on an iPhone and it's 12:28 PST). (Go to bottom of post for solution using views from #AdrianKalver)
select *,statdate :: timestamp :: time as stattime from table
works in PGAdmin and an example result is 12:47:54 as desired. How do I make this an alter table
ALTER TABLE tablename add COLUMN stattime timestamp generated always AS (select *,statdate :: timestamp :: time as stattime from tablename) stored;
is the wrong syntax.
ALTER TABLE tablename add COLUMN stattime timestamp generated always AS ( EXTRACT(HOUR FROM statdate) || ':' || EXTRACT(MINUTE FROM statdate) || ':' || EXTRACT(SECOND FROM statdate)) stored;
ERROR: generation expression is not immutable which I'm presuming is a type problem, although postgres can concatenate strings and numbers with this syntax.
Just tried something else
ALTER TABLE tablename add COLUMN stattime timestamp generated always AS ( Cast(EXTRACT(HOUR FROM statdate) as text) || ':' || cast(EXTRACT(MINUTE FROM statdate) as text) || ':' || cast(EXTRACT(SECOND FROM statdate) as text) ) stored; -- ERROR: generation expression is not immutable
I'm using the hours and minutes for a graph and I can't get in the middle of the Chartkick. Could do it in High Charts, but think it will be simpler to create the view chart and use that. The Rails/Chartkick looks like
<%= line_chart TableName.where(statdate: start..current_date).pluck(:statdate, :y_axis) %>
and can't break that apart. So will go with creating a View Table.
What's the right way to do this? I've looked here and at the postgresql docs and not having much luck.
Following comments, the solution
CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW public.view_bp_with_time AS
SELECT
id,
statdate,
statdate :: time AS stattime,
y-axis
FROM table_name
ORDER BY statdate
Now to bring into Rails. Not as straightforward as I thought. And I'm off the computer for the next week.
Per here:
https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/sql-createtable.html
GENERATED ALWAYS AS ( generation_expr ) STORED
This clause creates the column as a generated column. The column cannot be written to, and when read the result of the specified expression will be returned.
The keyword STORED is required to signify that the column will be computed on write and will be stored on disk.
The generation expression can refer to other columns in the table, but not other generated columns. Any functions and operators used must be immutable. References to other tables are not allowed.
Basically the cast from timestamptz to timestamp is not immutable as there are time zones involved.
For more information see:
https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/xfunc-volatility.html
Either:
Create a view that does the conversion.
Include it in your query as you show for the pgAdmin4 example.
Create a timestamp field on the table and either add the value to that field as part of INSERT\UPDATE or add a trigger that does that.
I am using Rails 5, PostgreSQL. I need to get count of users grouped by created_at day, using postgres DATE_TRUNC.
The conditions are users created within a date range and have orders within the same date range.
Below is my code which result in an AmbiguousFunction error
Spree::User.joins(:orders)
.where(spree_orders: { completed_at: params[:start_date]..params[:end_date] })
.order("DATE_TRUNC('day', 'created_at')")
.group("DATE_TRUNC('day', 'created_at')")
.count
The params of start_date and end_date are as follow:
params[:end_date] = Time.current.end_of_day
params[:start_date] = (Time.current - 200.days).beginning_of_day
I get the following error
ActiveRecord::StatementInvalid: PG::AmbiguousFunction: ERROR: function date_trunc(unknown, unknown) is not unique
and even when I explicitly write spree_users.created_at I get the same error.
Is there a better way to achieve the required or a solution for this error?
ActiveRecord::StatementInvalid: PG::AmbiguousFunction
This error occurs when our query contains a column name, which may belong to more than one table. For example, we have two tables, User and Company, and both of them have a column called name. Now the following query would raise an error similar to the one that you are facing:
User.joins(:companies).where("name = ABC")
This happens because we do not specify which table to search the name in. Hence, ActiveRecord gets confused and cannot create a unique query.
In the case mentioned above, the error can be resolved simply by prepending spree_users to the created_at column name used in the order and group queries:
Spree::User.joins(:orders)
.where(spree_orders: { completed_at: params[:start_date]..params[:end_date] })
.order("DATE_TRUNC('day', 'spree_users.created_at')")
.group("DATE_TRUNC('day', 'spree_users.created_at')")
.count
I think you can use date function from sql to get date of timestamp field, and since table User and SpreeOrder has created_at field, you should inform table name (spree_orders.created_at)
Spree::User.joins(:orders)
.where(spree_orders: { completed_at: params[:start_date]..params[:end_date]})
.order("date(spree_orders.created_at)")
.group("date(spree_orders.created_at)")
.count
I'm having trouble comparing dates in my rails 2 project. In one of my queries, one of the conditions is this:
:conditions => ["bills.created_at >= #{beginning.to_s.delete("-")} AND bills.created_at <= #{ending.to_s.delete("-")}"]
I pass it "2013-10-16" and "2013-12-15" for beginning and ending respectively. This worked in my staging environment but is broken in my production environment:
ActiveRecord::StatementInvalid: PGError: ERROR: operator does not exist: timestamp without time zone >= integer
LINE 1: SELECT * FROM "bills" WHERE (created_at >= 20131016)
How would I fix this? I saw this heroku Postgres error - operator does not exist timestamp without timezone = integer but it didn't help.
Your query is definitely very far from an ActiveRecord query syntax. Assuming you are using at least Rails 3 and beginning and ending are Time objects:
Bill.where("created_at >= ? AND created_at <= ?", beginning, ending)
or you can also use BETWEEN passing a Ruby Range
Bill.where(created_at: beginning..ending)
Please avoid to interpolate values in the query like you just did. The resulting query it's not protected against SQL injection.
You may also want to review the ActiveRecord documentation to learn a little bit how to use it properly.
For Rails < 3 you should pass the conditions to the find method.
Bill.find(:all, :conditions => "created_at >= ? AND created_at <= ?", beginning, ending)
I'm trying to figure out how to do a query where created_at.year == a given year, and created_at.month equals a given month.
However I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong.
Model.where("'created_at.month' = ? AND 'created_at.year' = ?", 7,2013)
results in nothing being shown.
However when I try Model.first.created_at.month ==7 and
Model.first.created_at.year ==2013 I get true for both.
Therefore theoretically my query should be at least be returning my first record.
Anyone know what I'm doing wrong or any alternative way to find records created on specific months?
Note that in my views the month / year will be parameters but for the purposes of this example I used actual values.
using ruby 1.9.3
rails 3.2.13
You can use the extract SQL function, that will extract the month and year of the timestamp:
Model.where('extract(year from created_at) = ? and extract(month from created_at) = ?', '2013','7')
This query should give you the desired result.
created_at is a timestamp; it is not a set of discrete fields in the database. created_at.year and such don't exist in your DB; it's simply a single timestamp field. When you call #model.created_at.year, Rails is loading the created_at field from the database, and creating a Time object from it, which has a #year method you can call.
What you want is to query on a range of dates:
Model.where("created_at >= ? and created_at < ?", Time.mktime(2013, 7), Time.mktime(2013, 8))
This will find any Model with a created_at timestamp in July 2013.
In my Rails app I've run into an issue a couple times that I'd like to know how other people solve:
I have certain records where a value is optional, so some records have a value and some are null for that column.
If I order by that column on some databases the nulls sort first and on some databases the nulls sort last.
For instance, I have Photos which may or may not belong to a Collection, ie there are some Photos where collection_id=nil and some where collection_id=1 etc.
If I do Photo.order('collection_id desc) then on SQLite I get the nulls last but on PostgreSQL I get the nulls first.
Is there a nice, standard Rails way to handle this and get consistent performance across any database?
I'm no expert at SQL, but why not just sort by if something is null first then sort by how you wanted to sort it.
Photo.order('collection_id IS NULL, collection_id DESC') # Null's last
Photo.order('collection_id IS NOT NULL, collection_id DESC') # Null's first
If you are only using PostgreSQL, you can also do this
Photo.order('collection_id DESC NULLS LAST') #Null's Last
Photo.order('collection_id DESC NULLS FIRST') #Null's First
If you want something universal (like you're using the same query across several databases, you can use (courtesy of #philT)
Photo.order('CASE WHEN collection_id IS NULL THEN 1 ELSE 0 END, collection_id')
Even though it's 2017 now, there is still yet to be a consensus on whether NULLs should take precedence. Without you being explicit about it, your results are going to vary depending on the DBMS.
The standard doesn't specify how NULLs should be ordered in comparison with non-NULL values, except that any two NULLs are to be considered equally ordered, and that NULLs should sort either above or below all non-NULL values.
source, comparison of most DBMSs
To illustrate the problem, I compiled a list of a few most popular cases when it comes to Rails development:
PostgreSQL
NULLs have the highest value.
By default, null values sort as if larger than any non-null value.
source: PostgreSQL documentation
MySQL
NULLs have the lowest value.
When doing an ORDER BY, NULL values are presented first if you do ORDER BY ... ASC and last if you do ORDER BY ... DESC.
source: MySQL documentation
SQLite
NULLs have the lowest value.
A row with a NULL value is higher than rows with regular values in ascending order, and it is reversed for descending order.
source
Solution
Unfortunately, Rails itself doesn't provide a solution for it yet.
PostgreSQL specific
For PostgreSQL you could quite intuitively use:
Photo.order('collection_id DESC NULLS LAST') # NULLs come last
MySQL specific
For MySQL, you could put the minus sign upfront, yet this feature seems to be undocumented. Appears to work not only with numerical values, but with dates as well.
Photo.order('-collection_id DESC') # NULLs come last
PostgreSQL and MySQL specific
To cover both of them, this appears to work:
Photo.order('collection_id IS NULL, collection_id DESC') # NULLs come last
Still, this one does not work in SQLite.
Universal solution
To provide cross-support for all DBMSs you'd have to write a query using CASE, already suggested by #PhilIT:
Photo.order('CASE WHEN collection_id IS NULL THEN 1 ELSE 0 END, collection_id')
which translates to first sorting each of the records first by CASE results (by default ascending order, which means NULL values will be the last ones), second by calculation_id.
Photo.order('collection_id DESC NULLS LAST')
I know this is an old one but I just found this snippet and it works for me.
Put minus sign in front of column_name and reverse the order direction. It works on mysql. More details
Product.order('something_date ASC') # NULLS came first
Product.order('-something_date DESC') # NULLS came last
Bit late to the show but there is a generic SQL way to do it. As usual, CASE to the rescue.
Photo.order('CASE WHEN collection_id IS NULL THEN 1 ELSE 0 END, collection_id')
The easiest way is to use:
.order('name nulls first')
For posterity's sake, I wanted to highlight an ActiveRecord error relating to NULLS FIRST.
If you try to call:
Model.scope_with_nulls_first.last
Rails will attempt to call reverse_order.first, and reverse_order is not compatible with NULLS LAST, as it tries to generate the invalid SQL:
PG::SyntaxError: ERROR: syntax error at or near "DESC"
LINE 1: ...dents" ORDER BY table_column DESC NULLS LAST DESC LIMIT...
This was referenced a few years ago in some still-open Rails issues (one, two, three). I was able to work around it by doing the following:
scope :nulls_first, -> { order("table_column IS NOT NULL") }
scope :meaningfully_ordered, -> { nulls_first.order("table_column ASC") }
It appears that by chaining the two orders together, valid SQL gets generated:
Model Load (12.0ms) SELECT "models".* FROM "models" ORDER BY table_column IS NULL DESC, table_column ASC LIMIT 1
The only downside is that this chaining has to be done for each scope.
Rails 6.1 adds nulls_first and nulls_last methods to Arel for PostgreSQL.
Example:
User.order(User.arel_table[:login_count].desc.nulls_last)
Source: https://www.bigbinary.com/blog/rails-6-1-adds-nulls-first-and-nulls-last-to-arel
Here are some Rails 6 solutions.
The answer by #Adam Sibik is a great summary about the difference between various database systems.
Unfortunately, though, some of the presented solutions, including "Universal solution" and "PostgreSQL and MySQL specific", would not work any more with Rails 6 (ActiveRecord 6) as a result of its changed specification of order() not accepting some raw SQLs (I confirm the "PostgreSQL specific" solution still works as of Rails 6.1.4). For the background of this change, see, for example,
"Updates for SQL Injection in Rails 6.1" by Justin.
To circumvent the problem, you can wrap around the SQL statements with Arel.sql as follows, where NULLs come last, providing you are 100% sure the SQL statements you give are safe.
Photo.order(Arel.sql('CASE WHEN collection_id IS NULL THEN 1 ELSE 0 END, collection_id'))
Just for reference, if you want to sort by a Boolean column (is_ok, as an example) in the order of [TRUE, FALSE, NULL] regardless of the database systems, either of these should work:
Photo.order(Arel.sql('CASE WHEN is_ok IS NULL THEN 1 ELSE 0 END, is_ok DESC'))
Photo.order(Arel.sql('CASE WHEN is_ok IS NULL THEN 1 WHEN is_ok IS TRUE THEN -1 ELSE 0 END'))
(n.b., SQLite does not have the Boolean type and so the former may be safer arguably, though it should not matter because Rails should guarantee the value is either 0 or 1 (or NULL).)
In my case I needed sort lines by start and end date by ASC, but in few cases end_date was null and that lines should be in above, I used
#invoice.invoice_lines.order('start_date ASC, end_date ASC NULLS FIRST')
Adding arrays together will preserve order:
#nonull = Photo.where("collection_id is not null").order("collection_id desc")
#yesnull = Photo.where("collection_id is null")
#wanted = #nonull+#yesnull
http://www.ruby-doc.org/core/classes/Array.html#M000271
It seems like you'd have to do it in Ruby if you want consistent results across database types, as the database itself interprets whether or not the NULLS go at the front or end of the list.
Photo.all.sort {|a, b| a.collection_id.to_i <=> b.collection_id.to_i}
But that is not very efficient.