Ruby on Rails plural (controller) and singular (model) convention - explanation

Question

As per Ruby on Rails convention, controller names get pluralized while model names are singular. Example : a Users controller, but a User model.

rails generate controller Users
rails generate model User name:string email:string

Now open migration file

 class CreateUsers < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def change
    create_table :users do |t|
      t.string :name
      t.string :email    
      t.timestamps
    end
  end
end

Here table name is plural (users).

So my question is - Why table name is plural (users) even though the model name is singular (User)?

score 58 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 09 '12 at 18:57

58

Ruby on Rails follow linguistic convention. That means a model represents a single user, whereas a database table consists of many users.

answered Apr 09 '12 at 18:57

AMIC MING

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So what's the story for non-standard pluralizations? For instance, if my model were "Activity", would the table end up being "Activities" or "Activitys"? – sak Sep 20 '12 at 14:59
6

It would be "Activities" the rails helper method "pluralize" is very clever. It knows that the plural of 'person' is 'people', and so on. http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionView/Helpers/TextHelper.html#method-i-pluralize – Matt Connolly Sep 27 '12 at 00:39
2

Does the Rails model pluralization convention assume models are written in English? – duhaime Jan 30 '16 at 19:23

score 13 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 09 '12 at 18:52

13

An instance of your User model represents a single user, so is singular. The users table, by contrast, holds all of your users, so it's plural.

answered Apr 09 '12 at 18:52

Emily

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score 4 · Answer 3 · edited Apr 04 '19 at 23:28

4

To complete Emily's answer

An instance of your User model represents a single user, so is singular. The users table, by contrast, holds all of your users, so it's plural.

edited Apr 04 '19 at 23:28

Rimian

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answered Apr 09 '12 at 18:57

Justin D.

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score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Jul 01 '14 at 07:41

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in rails conntroller and table name are plural model alone is singular.In a two word name second word is pluralized !

answered Jul 01 '14 at 07:41

Ganesh Arulanantham

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score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Apr 09 '12 at 18:51

0

Because the table holds users. Its just the convention.

answered Apr 09 '12 at 18:51

John Paul Ashenfelter

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Ruby on Rails plural (controller) and singular (model) convention - explanation

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