ActiveRecord conditions: Symbol or String

[dnagir]

Hi,

A quick question: in the query `Company.where(:status => :active)`, is it OK to use the symbol (:active) as a value in the query?

It definitely works with no issues at all.

But there's a lot of controversy around that in the squeel:

https://github.com/ernie/squeel/issues/67#issuecomment-5237083

 

Ernie explains that the use of Symbols in ActiveRecord wasn't assumed and is incorrect.

Additionally, he says "In AR documentation, symbols are never shown as a value in examples.".

I personally feel a bit lost in this regard and it would be awesome if somebody could shade some light on this.

Cheers,

Dmytrii.

[Michael Koziarski]

Hi,

A quick question: in the query `Company.where(:status => :active)`, is it OK to use the symbol (:active) as a value in the query?

It definitely works with no issues at all.

I'm not sure I'd consider it a public stable API, but if it works, go wild :).

 

[Dmytrii Nagirniak]

So it is not a public API and the symbols were not supposed to be used this way? RIght?

[Jon Leighton]

On 20/04/12 12:21, Dmytrii Nagirniak wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> A quick question: in the query `Company.where(:status => :active)`, is it OK to use the symbol (:active) as a value in the query?
>>>
>>> It definitely works with no issues at all.
>>>
>> I'm not sure I'd consider it a public stable API, but if it works, go wild :).
>
> So it is not a public API and the symbols were not supposed to be used this way? RIght?

It's not really good Ruby style. See
http://blog.hasmanythrough.com/2008/4/19/symbols-are-not-pretty-strings

However I think we'd probably have to add specific code to make it *not*
work, so it will probably continue to work in the future. But I wouldn't
recommend doing it.

--
http://jonathanleighton.com/

[Dmytrii Nagirniak]

On 20/04/2012, at 9:30 PM, Jon Leighton wrote:

> On 20/04/12 12:21, Dmytrii Nagirniak wrote:
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> A quick question: in the query `Company.where(:status => :active)`, is it OK to use the symbol (:active) as a value in the query?
>>>>
>>>> It definitely works with no issues at all.
>>>>
>>> I'm not sure I'd consider it a public stable API, but if it works, go wild :).
>>
>> So it is not a public API and the symbols were not supposed to be used this way? RIght?
>
> It's not really good Ruby style. See http://blog.hasmanythrough.com/2008/4/19/symbols-are-not-pretty-strings

Do you mind to explain why exactly?
I get the difference between strings and symbols, but in the example of "status" the string is definitely a wrong candidate to me.
It is "internal" to the system.
Although I understand and ok with converting it to a string to query, I don't see why symbol isn't good in this case (`company.status == :active`).

> However I think we'd probably have to add specific code to make it *not* work, so it will probably continue to work in the future. But I wouldn't recommend doing it.

I think you guys have settled that symbols are not "officially supported" here https://github.com/ernie/squeel/issues/67#issuecomment-5270896

So I'll take it for granted. Thanks a lot for the help.

Cheers.

[Dmytrii Nagirniak]

On 23/04/2012, at 12:37 PM, Dmytrii Nagirniak wrote:

I think you guys have settled that symbols are not "officially supported" here https://github.com/ernie/squeel/issues/67#issuecomment-5270896

So I'll take it for granted. Thanks a lot for the help.

Thus, this docrails commit. Hope that makes any sense.

https://github.com/lifo/docrails/commit/50c5005bafe7e43f81a141cd2c512379aec74325#commitcomment-1242004