Question about ActiveRecord#default_scope method and default ordering

Question

Question about default_scope with Rails 2/3. On my Rails 3 project, I'm using a lot default_scope to order by created_at desc. So first I wrote :

default_scope order("created_at desc")

in many of my models. But the problem is that created_at exist in almost every of my application tables... So if I write a query that simply makes a join on two tables, I get a SQL error ambiguous column created_at... So I had to rewrite all default_scopes to include the table_name, like:

default_scope order("posts.created_at desc")

Is there a better way to handle this problem or is it the only solution?

Thanks.

Answer 1

You should always specify the table name when using SQL strings in Rails so that you avoid these ambiguities. Note that you can do:

default_scope order("#{table_name}.created_at desc")