ActiveRecord works at the row (aka record) level, not the column level. That's not to say that you can't just get a single column of data back from the database, you can, but you won't have all the attributes if you do this so just keep that in mind. you'll probably want to map them to an array
try something like:
class User < ActiveRecord::Base def self.names # find all records, then map name attributes to an array find(:all, :select => "name").map(&:name) end end
then just do
@names = User.names
in your controller methods where you need it
btw
.map(&:name)
is shorthand for
.map { |x| x.name }
