Question

I found some topics here on SO, but I still can’t find the right setup for my query.

This is query, that works me well on localhost:

@cars = Car.find_by_sql('SELECT cars.*, COUNT(cars.id) AS counter 
                         FROM cars 
                         LEFT JOIN users ON cars.id=users.car_id 
                         GROUP BY cars.id ORDER BY counter DESC')

But on Heroku gives me the error above – GROUP BY clause or be used in an aggregate function.

Then I have read somewhere, that I should specify all columns in the table, so I tried this:

@cars = Car.find_by_sql('SELECT cars.id, cars.name, cars.created_at, 
                                cars.updated_at, COUNT(cars.id) AS counter 
                         FROM cars 
                         LEFT JOIN users ON cars.id=users.car_id 
                         GROUP BY (cars.id, cars.name, cars.created_at, cars.updated_at) 
                         ORDER BY counter DESC')

But this doesn’t work on localhost and also not on Heroku…

What should be the right config of the query?

Answer 1

I think you are trying to aggregate and group by on the same column. It depends on what data you want. Ether do this:

SELECT 
 cars.name, 
 cars.created_at, 
 cars.updated_at, 
 COUNT(cars.id) AS counter 
FROM cars 
LEFT JOIN users 
  ON cars.id=users.car_id 
GROUP BY cars.name, cars.created_at, cars.updated_at 
ORDER BY counter DESC

Or you want to count all maybe? Then like this:

SELECT
 cars.id,
 cars.name, 
 cars.created_at, 
 cars.updated_at, 
 COUNT(*) AS counter 
FROM cars 
LEFT JOIN users 
  ON cars.id=users.car_id 
GROUP BY cars.id, cars.name, cars.created_at, cars.updated_at 
ORDER BY counter DESC