Using ActiveRecord with column names with spaces i

Question

I work on a team that is using ActiveRecord to access the schema on a MSSQL server. Modifying the schema is not an option and the column names have spaces in them, a la SPACEY COLUMN.

When writing the ActiveRecord class to access a table with spaces in it, what is good practice?

We also need this to work with factory girl...

Answer 1

AR-JDBC (as well as the AR-SQLServer-Adapter) will/should handle this just fine since it auto-magically quotes column name identifiers using "[ COlumn NAME ]" ... I personally would hide this from bubbling up as much as possible e.g. using aliases :

class MySpacey < ActiveRecord::Base
  set_table_name 'SPACEY TABLE'
  set_primary_key 'MY ID'
  alias_attribute :id, :'MY ID'
end

Answer 2

Consider User is the Model and User Name is the column you need to access.

User.where('User Name' => 'Bob')

You can add multiple conditions also,

User.where('User Name' => 'Bob', 'Email Address' => '[e-mail]')

You can also try,

User.where('[User name] = ? AND [Email Address] = ?', 'Bob', '[e-mail]')

And if your table itself has space in it. Try,

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  self.table_name = "user table"
end