Question

In my feeble attempt to write better Model methods, I am failing hard. Which in turn, has brought me to ask my question here.

Here is my Model:

class Group < ActiveRecord::Base
  # Because of inheritance issues with ActiveRecord
  # We tell this Relation to use a "false" column to persuade
  # The relation to push forward without worrying about Inheritance
  self.inheritance_column = :_type_disabled

  scope :expired?, where('expiration_date > ?', Time.now)
end

This is what I am trying to do with my scope

g = Group.find(91)
g.expired?

So, essentially see if I can tell if the group is expired. Now, I know I can write this in my controller in my activerecord where statement, but I am trying to better understand handling data in models with Rails

Answer 1

That’s not what scopes are for 😉

To do what you want, just add an instance method:

def expired?
    expiration_date > Time.now
end

An expired scope would be use to select expired groups:

scope :expired, lambda { where('expiration_date > ?', Time.now) }

And you would use it like that:

Group.expired
# or
user.groups.expired
#etc