AmbiguousColumn ERROR in views/madmin/fields/has_many/_form.html.erb

[dbreunig]

When attempting to edit a record whose model is associated with another model, I'm hitting the following error:

Showing ruby/3.1.0/lib/ruby/gems/3.1.0/gems/madmin-1.2.7/app/views/madmin/fields/has_many/_form.html.erb where line #4 raised:
PG::AmbiguousColumn: ERROR: column reference "created_at" is ambiguous
LINE 1: ..."."list_id" WHERE "stars"."user_id" = $1 ORDER BY created_at...

The issue is pointing at that created_at. Then it cites line 768:

@connection.exec_params(sql, type_casted_binds)

The sql var passed into the exec_params method is:

SELECT lists.id FROM lists INNER JOIN stars ON lists.id = stars.list_id WHERE stars.user_id = $1 ORDER BY created_at DESC

This query is coming from an association on the List model, which reads:

class User < ApplicationRecord
    # ...
    has_and_belongs_to_many :starred_lists, -> { order "created_at DESC" }, join_table: "stars", class_name: "List", foreign_key: "user_id", association_foreign_key: "list_id", inverse_of: "starring_users"
    # ...
end

I was able to fix this issue on my end by updating the order clause, like so:

class User < ApplicationRecord
    # ...
    has_and_belongs_to_many :starred_lists, -> { order "stars.created_at DESC" }, join_table: "stars", class_name: "List", foreign_key: "user_id", association_foreign_key: "list_id", inverse_of: "starring_users"
    # ...
end

Given the previous association definition had not caused any issues throughout the rest of my app, you may consider this an issue to address. If you don't, makes sense: I'm also putting this hear for any future Googlers.