Rails 4: List of available datatypes

Nicolas Raoul picture Nicolas Raoul · Jul 29, 2013 · Viewed 307.1k times · Source

Where can I find a list of data types that can be used in Ruby on Rails 4? Such as

  • text
  • string
  • integer
  • float
  • date

I keep learning about new ones and I'd love to have a list I could easily refer to.

Answer

Nicolas Raoul picture Nicolas Raoul · Jul 29, 2013

Here are all the Rails 4 (ActiveRecord migration) datatypes:

  • :binary
  • :boolean
  • :date
  • :datetime
  • :decimal
  • :float
  • :integer
  • :bigint
  • :primary_key
  • :references
  • :string
  • :text
  • :time
  • :timestamp

Source: http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveRecord/ConnectionAdapters/SchemaStatements.html#method-i-add_column
These are the same as with Rails 3.

If you use PostgreSQL, you can also take advantage of these:

  • :hstore
  • :json
  • :jsonb
  • :array
  • :cidr_address
  • :ip_address
  • :mac_address

They are stored as strings if you run your app with a not-PostgreSQL database.

Edit, 2016-Sep-19:

There's a lot more postgres specific datatypes in Rails 4 and even more in Rails 5.