From d8f9a6868487b7e863379c988326b418e6fe1002 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: jbranchaud <jbranchaud@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 13 Jul 2015 22:16:37 -0500
Subject: [PATCH] Add Select Values For SQL Counts as a rails til.

---
 README.md                            |  1 +
 rails/select-value-for-sql-counts.md | 14 ++++++++++++++
 2 files changed, 15 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 rails/select-value-for-sql-counts.md

diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 322a83f..b839685 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -89,6 +89,7 @@ smart people at [Hashrocket](http://hashrocket.com/).
 - [Creating Records of Has_One Associations](rails/creating-records-of-has-one-associations.md)
 - [Pretend Generations](rails/pretend-generations.md)
 - [Retrieve An Object If It Exists](rails/retrieve-an-object-if-it-exists.md)
+- [Select Value For SQL Counts](rails/select-values-for-sql-counts.md)
 - [Show Pending Migrations](rails/show-pending-migrations.md)
 
 ### ruby
diff --git a/rails/select-value-for-sql-counts.md b/rails/select-value-for-sql-counts.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..22eb325
--- /dev/null
+++ b/rails/select-value-for-sql-counts.md
@@ -0,0 +1,14 @@
+# Select Value For SQL Counts
+
+If you are like me and prefer writing raw SQL over the Arel DSL for counting
+stuff in your database, then the `select_value` method will come in handy.
+Write a command similar to the following with a type cast to get the count
+of _whatever_.
+
+```ruby
+> sql = 'select count(*) from posts where published_at is not null'
+=> "select count(*) from posts where published_at is not null"
+> ActiveRecord::Base.connection.select_value(sql).to_i
+   (0.6ms)  select count(*) from posts where published_at is not null
+=> 42
+```