Common Mistakes When Querying with Enums #

❌ Using Strings Instead of Symbols #

❌ Incorrect:

User.where(status: "active") # Won’t work properly

✅ Correct:

User.where(status: :active)

❌ Querying with Invalid Enum Keys #

If you query with a non-existent enum key, Rails won’t raise an error, but it won’t return expected results.

User.where(status: :unknown) # Returns an empty array instead of raising an error

✅ Solution: Use User.statuses.keys to check available values.

User.statuses.keys # => ["active", "inactive", "banned"]

❌ Forgetting to Handle NULL Values #

If a database column allows NULL, filtering for an enum may miss records that have NULL values.

✅ Solution: Always handle NULL explicitly.

User.where(status: nil) # Fetches records with NULL status