Feature #775
Updated by Daniel Curtis about 8 years ago
There are many different types of data types used for database tables with Ruby on Rails, each different database backend having their own data types. This is just a simple list of generic data types used with ActiveRecord with Ruby on Rails. h2. @:string@ * Limited to 255 characters (depending on DBMS) * Use for short text fields (names, emails, etc) --- h2. @:text@ * Unlimited length (depending on DBMS) * Use for comments, blog posts, etc. General rule of thumb: if it's captured via textarea, use Text. For input using textfields, use string. --- h2. @:integer@ * Whole numbers --- h2. @:float@ * Decimal numbers stored with floating point precision * Precision is fixed, which can be problematic for some calculations; generally no good for math operations due to inaccurate rounding. --- h2. @:decimal@ * Decimal numbers stored with precision that varies according to what is needed by your calculations; use these for math that needs to be accurate * See this post for examples and an in-depth explanation on the differences between floats and decimals. --- h2. @:boolean@ * Use to store true/false attributes (i.e. things that only have two states, like on/off) --- h2. @:binary@ * Use to store images, movies, and other files in their original, raw format in chunks of data called blobs --- h2. @:date@ * Stores only a date (year, month, day) --- h2. @:time@ * Stores only a time (hours, minutes, seconds) --- h2. @:datetime@ * Stores both date and time --- h2. @:timestamp@ * Stores both date and time --- h1. Resources * http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11889048/is-there-documentation-for-the-rails-column-types * http://blog.ifyouseewendy.com/blog/2015/08/10/data-types-in-rails/ * http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17918117/rails-4-list-of-available-datatypes