Lets pretend we have a user model with a created_at attribute which is stored as a timestamp.

If we want to plot a simple graph showing signups per date this is the way to extract them:

[cc lang="ruby"]
User.count(:group => “DATE(created_at)”)
[/cc]

Thats all there is to it. From this you will get an OrderedHash containing the date and count of users for each date.

One small thing to remember if you are using PostgreSQL. You will need the DATE() function in any ORDER/SELECT statements because PostgreSQL will only select/order by fields thats in the GROUP BY statement and this is a pretty healthy behavior that many databases (no names here) don’t care about. Think about it. If you are grouping all users by date and use * as selector how would the database know which username or email address to display?

This is what happens if you try to group by created_at without DATE() ->

[cc lang="ruby"]
>> User.count(:order => ‘created_at DESC’, :group => ["DATE(created_at)"])
ActiveRecord::StatementInvalid: PGError: ERROR: column “users.created_at” must appear in the GROUP BY clause or be used in an aggregate function
: SELECT count(*) AS count_all, DATE(created_at) AS date_created_at FROM “users” GROUP BY DATE(created_at) ORDER BY created_at DESC
from /tmp/app/vendor/rails/activerecord/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract_adapter.rb:212:in `log’
from /tmp/app/vendor/rails/activerecord/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/postgresql_adapter.rb:507:in `execute’
from /tmp/app/vendor/rails/activerecord/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/postgresql_adapter.rb:985:in `select_raw’
from /tmp/app/vendor/rails/activerecord/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/postgresql_adapter.rb:972:in `select’
from /tmp/app/vendor/rails/activerecord/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/database_statements.rb:7:in `select_all_without_query_cache’
from /tmp/app/vendor/rails/activerecord/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/query_cache.rb:62:in `select_all’
from /tmp/app/vendor/rails/activerecord/lib/active_record/calculations.rb:255:in `execute_grouped_calculation’
from /tmp/app/vendor/rails/activerecord/lib/active_record/calculations.rb:132:in `calculate’
from /tmp/app/vendor/rails/activerecord/lib/active_record/calculations.rb:130:in `catch’
from /tmp/app/vendor/rails/activerecord/lib/active_record/calculations.rb:130:in `calculate’
from /tmp/app/vendor/rails/activerecord/lib/active_record/calculations.rb:48:in `count’
from (irb):18
[/cc]

And this is the right way to do it:

[cc lang="ruby"]
>> User.count(:order => ‘DATE(created_at) DESC’, :group => ["DATE(created_at)"])
=> #22, “2009-10-25″=>4, “2009-11-04″=>8, “2009-10-15″=>9, “2009-10-26″=>16, “2009-11-05″=>9, “2009-10-16″=>193, “2009-10-27″=>14, “2009-11-06″=>9, “2009-10-17″=>49, “2009-10-28″=>15, “2009-11-07″=>6, “2009-10-18″=>36, “2009-10-29″=>8, “2009-10-19″=>116, “2009-10-30″=>15>[/cc]

As you may notice the Hash does not look ordered. But if you loop over it you will get them in order:

[cc lang='ruby']
>> User.count(:order => ‘DATE(created_at) DESC’, :group => ["DATE(created_at)"]).each {|u| puts “#{u[0]} -> #{u[1]}” }
2009-11-07 -> 6
2009-11-06 -> 9
2009-11-05 -> 9
2009-11-04 -> 8
2009-11-03 -> 14
2009-11-02 -> 20
2009-11-01 -> 10
2009-10-31 -> 6
2009-10-30 -> 15
2009-10-29 -> 8
..
[/cc]

And thats how you group a timestamp field with just its date part.

Cheers!