How to override :order defined in a has_many

Question

I have

class Authors 
has_many :books, :order => 'name ASC'

I am trying to query all the books sorted by name DESC

Authors.books.order('name DESC')

but the result is

SELECT * FROM .... ORDER BY name ASC, name DESC

and the results come back with the name sorted ASC

is there a way to remove the original order in the association or override it? Or is specifying an order in a relation a bad idea?

using Rails 3.0.3

score 106 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 16 '18 at 13:46

106

Authors.books.reorder('name DESC')

edited Apr 16 '18 at 13:46

mb21

answered Nov 17 '10 at 07:52

Ariejan

That's great! Couldn't find it documented anywhere though; where did you find it? – Christopher Nov 17 '10 at 08:17
2

Actually, is this still valid? https://github.com/rails/rails/commit/e0b76d6151821527f16b3f163abde3ebea1b2a50 – Christopher Nov 17 '10 at 08:24
3

@Christopher ~ Not by my reading. May I suggest (which you probably already deduced from that post) accepting @Jon's answer below? – jcolebrand Dec 27 '10 at 05:44
Works also in Rails 5: http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveRecord/QueryMethods.html#method-i-reorder – mb21 Apr 16 '18 at 13:45

score 35 · Answer 2 · edited Oct 16 '12 at 15:13

35

.reorder() has been deprecated in Rails 3.0.3 in favor of .except(:order).order()

So use this:

Authors.books.except(:order).order('name DESC')

edited Oct 16 '12 at 15:13

mahemoff

answered Dec 26 '10 at 15:17

Jon

3

I don't see any deprecation warnings on rails 3.1.0.rc4 about #reorder, and `.except(:order).order()` doesn't exclude order clauses that are pulled in from associations. – ben_h Jul 05 '11 at 07:31
1

`.except(:order).order()` **does** exclude order clauses defined on associations. – Anjan Sep 25 '12 at 19:42
3

I don't see any mention of `reorder` being deprecated in Rails 3.2.8: http://apidock.com/rails/v3.2.8/ActiveRecord/QueryMethods/reorder – mxk Oct 18 '12 at 14:35
4

`reorder` is still valid in Rails 4.0.2: http://apidock.com/rails/v4.0.2/ActiveRecord/QueryMethods/reorder – cgenco Sep 16 '14 at 00:02

score -1 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 20 '12 at 03:34

-1

Author.first.books.reverse_order

answered Jul 20 '12 at 03:34

Subba Rao

3 Answers3