Question

When creating named scopes in a model, is it necessary to call the model before the attribute that you are using in your query?

Example

  scope :sorted, order('position ASC')

vs

  scope :sorted, order('pages.position ASC')

is the latter preferred, or inline with conventions? are there benefits to either? or is it just a matter of clarity or legibility?

Answer 1

You will need to declare the model if the scope will be used with a join with another model, which has a field with the same name.

Say the company has_one :contact, and the Contact has a position. Then

Company.sorted.joins(:contact)

will complain (on the SQL level) that it’s unclear which of the position fields should be used for sorting.

Otherwise it’s optional.