Ruby-on-Rails: Selecting distinct values from the model
The .distinct
option was added for rails 4 which is what the latest guides refer to.
Rails 2
If you are still on rails 2 you will need to use:
Client.select('distinct(name)')
Rails 3
If you are on Rails 3 you will need to use:
Client.select(:name).uniq
If you look at the equivalent section of the rails 3 guide you can see the difference between the two versions.
If you do not want ActiveRecord::Relations returned, just an array of the names as strings, then use:
Client.distinct.pluck(:name)
To get an ordered result set:
Client.order(:name).distinct.pluck(:name)
There are some approaches:
Rails way:
Model.select(:name).distinct
Semi-rails way
Model.select("DISTINCT ON(models.name) models.*")
The second allows you to select the first record uniqued by name, but in the whole matter, not only names.