How to use OR condition in ActiveRecord query

Question

I want to grab all the users that either have an email as the one supplied or the first and last name. So for example:

users = User.where(:first_name => \         


        

Answer 1

If you prefer a DSL approach (with no SQL), can use the underlying Arel layer:

t = User.arel_table
users = User.where(
  (t[:first_name].eq('Ernie').and(t[:last_name].eq('Scott')).
    or(t[:email].eq('james#gmail.com'))
)

That's a bit ugly, but if you use some wrapper over Arel (for example, this one), the code is much nicer:

users = User.where(
  ((User[:first_name] == 'Ernie') & (User[:last_name] == 'Scott')) |
   (User[:email] == 'james#gmail.com')
)