Question

I’m using rails 3.2.3, rspec 2.9.0, mysql5.1

The original request is

def index
  @votes = current_contest.votes.select('COUNT(*) AS votes_count, submission_id').group('submission_id').order('votes_count DESC')
end

In development env all works fine, but in my test I got error(ActiveRecord add additional aliases and rewrite mine)

ActionView::Template::Error:
   Mysql2::Error: Unknown column 'votes_count' in 'order clause': SELECT COUNT(*) AS count_all, submission_id AS submission_id FROM `votes` INNER JOIN `invitations` ON `votes`.`invitation_id` = `invitations`.`id` WHERE `invitations`.`contest_id` = 1 AND (`invitations`.`status` = 'used') GROUP BY submission_id ORDER BY votes_count DESC

I can catch this error on a simple query like this

def index    
  @votes = Vote.select('COUNT(*) AS votes_count, submission_id')
end

log output is

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM `votes`

BUT!!! If I do

def index    
  @votes = Vote.select('COUNT(*) AS votes_count, submission_id')
  @votes.inspect # or something else calling @votes
end

I got the correct sql query in console log

SELECT COUNT(*) AS votes_count, submission_id FROM `votes`

Answer 1

I guess, you call something like

if @votes.any?

in your view.

Method any? will count records in the table.
For instance, Vote.any? will produce something like:

SELECT COUNT(*) AS count_all FROM `votes`;

In your case your COUNT(*) AS votes_count will be replaced with COUNT(*) AS count_all, but alias votes_count will be left in the order clause.

SELECT COUNT(*) AS count_all, submission_id AS submission_id FROM `votes` 
  INNER JOIN `invitations` ON `votes`.`invitation_id` = `invitations`.`id` 
WHERE `invitations`.`contest_id` = 1 AND (`invitations`.`status` = 'used') 
GROUP BY submission_id 
ORDER BY votes_count DESC