Is there anyway to use native database functions in ActiveRecord?
Example: Suppose I want to use now() in Postgres. I don't want to use Time.now because I want the database time to be used, not the Rails server time.
Something like this, which obviously doesn't work.
TableCommon.new( {:upd_date => now()} )
Note: This is a contrived example. I don't want to use now(), but I want to use other database functions, and wish to know how to use it via ActiveRecord.
Yes, you can access it directly via the connection
TableCommon.new( :upd_date => TableCommon.connection.select_value("now()") )
connection.select_value to get a single result back, ignoring the rest:
ActiveRecord::Base.connection.select_value("select 1,2") #returns 1
connection.select to get a hash back:
ActiveRecord::Base.connection.select("select 1 as a ,2 as b") #{"a"=>1, "b" =>2}
connection.select_all will give an array of hashes, one per row like select.
connection.select_values will give an array, with the value from the first value in each row. It's like select_value but with multiple rows.
