Getting typed results from ActiveRecord raw SQL

Question

In Sequel, I can do:

irb(main):003:0> DB[\"select false\"].get
=> false

Which returns a false boolean. I\'d like to be able to do so

Answer 1

Pretty ugly but does what you are asking for:

res = ActiveRecord::Base.connection.
select_all("select 1 as aa, false as aas, 123::varchar, Array[1,2] as xx")

# Breaks unless returned values have unique column names
res.map{|row|row.map{|col,val|res.column_types[col].type_cast val}}

# Don't care about no column names
res.map{|row|
  row.values.map.with_index{|val,idx|
    res.column_types.values[idx].type_cast val
  }
}

gives:

[[1, false, "123", [1, 2]]]

How it works:

res.column_types

returns a hash of columns names and Postgresql column types

Here is a pointer to how it works: https://github.com/rails/docrails/blob/fb8ac4f7b8487e4bb5c241dc0ba74da30f21ce9f/activerecord/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/postgresql/oid/float.rb