ActiveRecord OR query

in Rails 3, it should be

Model.where("column = ? or other_column = ?", value, other_value)

This also includes raw sql but I dont think there is a way in ActiveRecord to do OR operation. Your question is not a noob question.

Rails 5 added or, so this is easier now in an app with Rails version greater than 5:

Model.where(column: value).or(Model.where(other_column: other_value)

this handles nil values as well

If you want to use an OR operator on one column's value, you can pass an array to .where and ActiveRecord will use IN(value,other_value):

Model.where(:column => ["value", "other_value"]

outputs:

SELECT `table_name`.* FROM `table_name` WHERE `table_name`.`column` IN ('value', 'other_value')

This should achieve the equivalent of an OR on a single column

An updated version of Rails/ActiveRecord may support this syntax natively. It would look similar to:

Foo.where(foo: 'bar').or.where(bar: 'bar')

As noted in this pull request https://github.com/rails/rails/pull/9052

For now, simply sticking with the following works great:

Foo.where('foo= ? OR bar= ?', 'bar', 'bar')

Update: According to https://github.com/rails/rails/pull/16052 the or feature will be available in Rails 5

Update: Feature has been merged to Rails 5 branch

Use ARel

t = Post.arel_table

results = Post.where(
  t[:author].eq("Someone").
  or(t[:title].matches("%something%"))
)

The resulting SQL:

ree-1.8.7-2010.02 > puts Post.where(t[:author].eq("Someone").or(t[:title].matches("%something%"))).to_sql
SELECT     "posts".* FROM       "posts"  WHERE     (("posts"."author" = 'Someone' OR "posts"."title" LIKE '%something%'))