Private method selected for class - Rails

Question

I have the following code inside my controller:

array = Contact.select(:name).distinct

The idea is that this would create an array of all Contact models with a unique attribute :name . However, he throws this error:

NoMethodError (private method 'select' called for Contact:Class)

What is the misunderstanding here? For what it's worth, the method that calls this line of code is not defined in the controller as private.

EDIT:

Here is the actual code:

Controller

 class FluidsurveysController < ApplicationController def index end def import_contacts @survey_provider = FluidsurveysProviders::SurveyProvider.new() @current_month = Time.new.strftime("%B%Y%d") fs_contact_list_array = csv_to_array(params[:file].tempfile) @fs_contacts_array = [] fs_contact_list_array.each do |hash| @fs_contacts_array << Contact.new(hash) end array = Contact.select(:name).distinct end end 

Model

 class Contact include ActiveModel::Model attr_reader :client_id, :client_name, :branch_id, :branch, :short_name, :unit_id, :membership_id, :first_name, :last_name, :date_of_birth, :change_date_time, :membership_type, :home_phone, :email_address, :anniversary_years def initialize(fs_contact_hash = {}) @client_id = fs_contact_hash.fetch('ClientID') @client_name = fs_contact_hash.fetch('ClientName') @branch_id = fs_contact_hash.fetch('branchID1') @branch = fs_contact_hash.fetch('branch') @name = fs_contact_hash.fetch('ShortName') @unit_id = fs_contact_hash.fetch('UnitID') @membership_id = fs_contact_hash.fetch('MemberID') @first_name = fs_contact_hash.fetch('FirstName') @last_name = fs_contact_hash.fetch('LastName') @date_of_birth = fs_contact_hash.fetch('DateOfBirth') @change_date_time = fs_contact_hash.fetch('ChangeDateTime') @membership_type = fs_contact_hash.fetch('MembershipType') @home_phone = fs_contact_hash.fetch('HomePhone') @email_address = fs_contact_hash.fetch('EMail1') @anniversary_years = fs_contact_hash.fetch('Years') end end 

Answer 1

Based on your error message, I'm sure your model is not an ActiveRecord object.

If you want to use ActiveRecord#select , define your model as follows.

 class Contact < ActiveRecord::Base 

You also need to define your attributes in the database, not through attr_reader to access them through ActiveRecord. See http://guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started.html#running-a-migration

Answer 2

You seem to be using an older version of Rails, specifically version 2.3. Whatever. There, the select method is really private to the classes of the ActiveRecord model (since it is inherited from the Kernel module, which is part of every Ruby object and has a completely different purpose), and therefore it is not intended for use as is done in Rails 3 and Rails 4.

In Rails 2.3, you can achieve similar results using this syntax:

 Contact.all(:select => "DISTINCT name") 

This will return an array of contacts that have only the name attribute.