Question

Below is a query I make then render a json based on the results. However SELECT fields with the same name are overwritten for example meal.name and meal.id is being overwritten by restaurants.name and restaurants.id.

I tried the query string out in SQLite and it returns all the columns I need find, but it does not render properly as a JSON output. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you

Here is my rails code in my controller

    @meals = Meal.find(:all,
                  :select => 'meals.name, meals.id, sum(meal_ratings.rating), restaurants.name', 
                  :joins => 'LEFT JOIN meal_ratings, restaurants ON meals.id = meal_ratings.meal_id AND restaurants.id = meals.restaurant_id',
                  :group => 'meal_ratings.meal_id ',
                  :order => 'meal_ratings.rating DESC')
    respond_to do |format|
      format.html # show.html.erb
      format.json { render json: @meals } #  
    end

Here are the results:

[{"id":1,"name":"Parkside","sum(meal_ratings.rating)":2},
{"id":2,"name":"Parkside","sum(meal_ratings.rating)":1},
{"id":3,"name":"EVK","sum(meal_ratings.rating)":-1}]

Here is the identical SQL command:

SELECT meals.name, meals.id, sum(meal_ratings.rating), restaurants.name
FROM meals 
LEFT JOIN meal_ratings, restaurants ON meals.id = meal_ratings.meal_id AND restaurants.id = meals.restaurant_id
GROUP BY meal_ratings.meal_id 
ORDER BY meal_ratings.rating DESC

Here is the SQL results

name|id|sum(meal_ratings.rating)|name
Pizza|1|2|Parkside
Pork Chops|2|1|Parkside
Spaghetti|3|-1|EVK

Answer 1

You could use SQL aliases to get around this problem:

:select => 'meals.name as meal_name, meals.id as meal_id, sum(meal_ratings.rating) as meal_rating, restaurants.name as restaurant_name'