---
title: "Rails 7 adds ActiveRecord::QueryMethods#in_order_of"
description: "Ruby 7.0 adds ActiveRecord::QueryMethods#in_order_of"
canonical_url: "https://www.bigbinary.com/blog/rails-7-adds-activerecord-query-methods-in-order-of"
markdown_url: "https://www.bigbinary.com/blog/rails-7-adds-activerecord-query-methods-in-order-of.md"
---

# Rails 7 adds ActiveRecord::QueryMethods#in_order_of

Ruby 7.0 adds ActiveRecord::QueryMethods#in_order_of

- Author: Ashik Salman
- Published: November 2, 2021
- Categories: Rails, Rails 7

Rails 7 introduces
[ActiveRecord::QueryMethods#in_order_of](https://edgeapi.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveRecord/QueryMethods.html#method-i-in_order_of)
to fetch active record collection in a specific order based on the given
attribute values.

We can see the similar method available for `Enumerable#in_order_of` to
constrain records in a specific order from an enumerable collection by using
key-series pair. You can find more details here in
[our blog](https://www.bigbinary.com/blog/rails-7-adds-enumerable-in-order-of)
regarding `Enumerable#in_order_of` method.

The newly introduced method is highly helpful to build queries by which we can
specify an explicit order that we would like to get the collection as result.
Otherwise we will have to make custom `CASE` statements to specify the order in
raw SQL statement format.

```ruby
# Fetch Post records in order of [3, 5, 1]
SELECT "posts".* FROM "posts" ORDER BY CASE "posts"."id" WHEN 3 THEN 1 WHEN 5 THEN 2 WHEN 1 THEN 3 ELSE 4 END ASC
```

### Before

Suppose we have a `Course` model with `status` column having possible values
like `enrolled`, `started` & `completed`. If we want to fetch all course records
as a collection with status values in order of `started`, `enrolled` &
`completed`, then the only option here is to build the `CASE` statement as raw
SQL. Otherwise we will have to make iterations over the returned result to
modify in the specific order we wish to get back.

```ruby
Course.order(
  Arel.sql(
    %q(
      case status
      when 'started' then 1
      when 'enrolled' then 2
      when 'completed' then 3
      else 4 end
    )
  )
)
```

### Rails 7 onwards

The `ActiveRecord::QueryMethods#in_order_of` method will prepare either `CASE`
statement or will make use of built-in function (Eg: `FIELD` in MySQL) based on
the adapter to perform the specified order.

```ruby
Course.in_order_of(:status, %w(started enrolled completed))
```

The returned result here is an `ActiveRecord::Relation` object, unlike the
result for `Enumerable#in_order_of` where it is an array. Henc,e we can chain
other scopes or query methods with the result while using
`ActiveRecord::QueryMethods#in_order_of` method.

```ruby
Course.in_order_of(:status, %w(started enrolled completed)).order(:created_at: :desc).pluck(:name)
```

Please check out this [pull request](https://github.com/rails/rails/pull/42061)
for more details.

## Links

- [Human page](https://www.bigbinary.com/blog/rails-7-adds-activerecord-query-methods-in-order-of)