Explicitly Set Table Name

ActiveRecord includes a table_name method that infers your database table name based on a class name. For an empty model called AlternativePost, here's what it comes up with:

[0] > AlternativePost.table_name
=> "alternative_posts"

If this isn't right, you're in trouble (Postgres example):

[1] > AlternativePost.new
PG::UndefinedTable: ERROR:  relation "alternative_posts" does not exist

Luckily, you can set the table name explicitly with the table_name= method.

class AlternativePost < ActiveRecord::Base
  self.table_name = 'posts'
end

Now Rails knows which database table to refer to:

[2] > AlternativePost.table_name
=> "posts"
[3] > AlternativePost.new
=> #<AlternativePost:0x007f8554dcbd98 id: nil, title: nil...

A practical application would be a model Post that corresponds to a table organized inside a Postgres schema admin.posts.