Rails: Should ActiveRecord use 'RETURNING *' instead of 'RETURNING id' on inserts/updates?

[joevandyk]

Might be nice to have an option for ActiveRecord inserts and updates to use RETURNING * instead of RETURNING <primary key>.

Below is a small test case that shows why.

require 'active_record'
require 'logger'

# change to some test database already setup on your system
ActiveRecord::Base.establish_connection('postgres://localhost/some_database')

ActiveRecord::Base.logger = Logger.new(STDERR)

ActiveRecord::Base.connection.execute <<-SQL
drop table if exists t;
create table t (
  id serial primary key, 
  tomorrow timestamptz default now() + interval '1 day'
);
SQL

class T < ActiveRecord::Base
  self.table_name = 't'
end

t = T.create!

p t
# t.tomorrow is nil :(
# SQL was: INSERT INTO "t" DEFAULT VALUES RETURNING "id"

p t.reload # it's there on reload though.

[joevandyk]

https://github.com/joevandyk/rails/commit/4497703f3190aed3bd0aa36609310642683a5c0a is a failing rails test case for this.

[joevandyk]

If postgresql modifies a column with a trigger, activerecord won't know about the changes until the model object is reloaded.

I'd love a way to be able to toggle this on and off on a case-by-case basis (there's going to be a performance regression if this is turned on all the time).

[rafaelfranca]

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