ActiveRecord find starts with

Question

Really simple question - how do I do a search to find all records where the name starts with a certain string in ActiveRecord. I\'ve seen all sorts of bits all over the internet

Answer 1

I don't want to write a scope every time I want to see if a specific column starts_with a prefix.

# initializers/active_record_initializers.rb
class ActiveRecord::Base
  # do not accept a column_name from the outside without sanitizing it
  # as this can be prone to sql injection
  def self.starts_with(column_name, prefix)
    where("lower(#{column_name}) like ?", "#{prefix.downcase}%")
  end
end

Call it like this:

User.starts_with('name', 'ab').limit(1)