Question

I’m writing a Rails 3 ActiveRecord query using the “where” syntax, that uses both the SQL IN and the SQL OR operator and can’t figure out how to use both of them together.

This code works (in my User model):

Question.where(:user_id => self.friends.ids)
#note: self.friends.ids returns an array of integers

but this code

Question.where(:user_id => self.friends.ids OR :target => self.friends.usernames)

returns this error

syntax error, unexpected tCONSTANT, expecting ')'
...user_id => self.friends.ids OR :target => self.friends.usern...

Any idea how to write this in Rails, or just what the raw SQL query should be?

Answer 1

raw SQL

SELECT *
FROM table
WHERE user_id in (LIST OF friend.ids) OR target in (LIST OF friends.usernames)

with each list comma separate. I don’t know the Rails ActiveRecord stuff that well. For AND you would just put a comma between those two conditions, but idk about OR