Rails: Configuring the default sorting behaviour

In Rails, the implicit_order_column Show archive.org snapshot (added in Rails 6) is a configuration option that helps you define the default sorting behavior of ActiveRecord queries when no explicit ORDER BY clause is provided. This option allows you to specify a column that Rails will use to automatically sort records in a particular order when no specific ordering is given.

Since the id is typically the primary key and automatically indexed, Rails will default to ordering the records by id in ascending order during an ordered finder call.

class User < ApplicationRecord
end

User.first #=> SELECT "users".* FROM "users" ORDER BY "users"."id" ASC LIMIT 1

class User < ApplicationRecord
  self.implicit_order_column = ['updated_at']
end

User.first #=> SELECT "users".* FROM "users" ORDER BY "users"."updated_at" ASC, "users"."id" ASC LIMIT 1