RoR: named_scope, all records created within last 7 days?

Question

how do i define a named_scope to return all the records that were created within the last 7 days, and then how do i use that named scope in a controller?

Answer 1

You need to pass named_scope a proc so it will be evaluated every time the call to named_scope is run. Otherwise if you specify Time.now it will run once (on first call) and be "cached" until the app is restarted.

  named_scope \
    :this_week,
    :conditions =>  [
      %created_at > :time!,
      proc {{:time => Time.now}}
    ]

You can call the named_scope like @ar_object.this_week

Answer 2

I would recommend watching the Railscast Episode on named_scope.

Ideally, the code you're looking for would be:

 named_scope :recent, 
   lambda { |*args| {:conditions => ["created_at > ?", (args.first || 7.days.ago)]} }

This will allow you to pass a parameter to the named scope or it will default to the previous 7 days.

You would call it using:

MyModel.recent