Ordering with Rails query with Hstore

Question

I have a model Post

#<Post id: 121978, created_at: "2014-05-02 18:11:15", updated_at: "2014-05-02 18:11:15", data: {"hi"=>"1", "hello"=>"9999"}, review_id: nil> 

And I'd like to sort them based on hello within the hstore datatype column data

I made this query:

Post.order("data -> 'hello'")

Which works but since Hstore is in string, I have 780, 78, 77, ... as an output.

Answer 1

I think you can cast the value as an integer before being processed by order. I'm not that familiar with Hstore, but here are some examples of how you might try to do that:

Post.order("CAST(data -> 'hello' AS INT)")
Post.order("CONVERT(INT, data -> 'hello')")
Post.order("(data -> 'hello') * 1")