Ignore columns on ActiveRecord queries in Rails

ActiveRecord models have ignored_columns defined as a class attribute. This allows us to, just like it says, ignore a particular column from our queries and returning ActiveRecords.

class Procedure < ApplicationRecord
    self.ignored_columns = [:created_at, :updated_at]
end

If we perform a lookup, this is what we'll now see.

Procedure.all

=> SELECT "procedures"."id", "procedures"."name" FROM "procedures"

Notice the subtle difference?

Without the ignored_columns declaration, we'd see a query like this:

Procedure.all

=> SELECT "procedures".* FROM "procedures"