How does ActiveRecord know the primary_key?

February 13, 2021

While trying to help someone debug an ActiveRecord::UnknownPrimaryKey error, I went down a rabbit-hole trying to figure out how Rails determines the primary key. Hopefully this provides a tiny bit more insight on how Rails works!


If you’re using Postgres, ActiveRecord searches for a primary key index on the table. If you’re using a different database, the answer probably lies in the respective SchemaStatements of the adapter, e.g. ActiveRecord::ConnectionAdapters::MySQL::SchemaStatements (source).

Finding the Primary Key

ActiveRecord::Base includes the AttributeMethods module, which in turn includes PrimaryKey. The module has a #primary_key method:

def primary_key
  @primary_key = reset_primary_key unless defined? @primary_key

If we follow the #reset_primary_key method, we’ll eventually reach #get_primary_key, which tries to get the key from the SchemaCache:

def get_primary_key(base_name)
  if # ...
    if ActiveRecord::Base != self && table_exists?
      pk = connection.schema_cache.primary_keys(table_name)
			# ...
      # ...

In the SchemaCache, we see that if the primary_keys cache does not already have the key, it will attempt to call connection.primary_key(table_name):

def primary_keys(table_name)
  @primary_keys.fetch(table_name) do # if the table_name key isn't in the Hash, execute this block
		# ...
    @primary_keys[deep_deduplicate(table_name)] = deep_deduplicate(connection.primary_key(table_name))
    # ...

This method is found in SchemaStatements, and it in turn attempts to call #primary_keys. This call goes to the database adapter, in my case PostgreSQL::SchemaStatements:

def primary_keys(table_name) # :nodoc:
  query_values(<<~SQL, "SCHEMA")
    SELECT a.attname
      FROM (
               FROM pg_index
              WHERE indrelid = #{quote(quote_table_name(table_name))}::regclass
                AND indisprimary
           ) i
      JOIN pg_attribute a
        ON a.attrelid = i.indrelid
       AND a.attnum = i.indkey[i.idx]
     ORDER BY i.idx

The subquery in particular is crucial - basically, Rails looks for a primary key index belonging to the table. Let’s focus on the important bits:

/* from all the indexes */
FROM pg_index
/* find those for table_name */
/* you can google for regclass, it's another Postgres rabbit-hole */
WHERE indrelid = table_name::regclass
/* that are primary keys */
AND indisprimary

This is usually automatically created during a migration - Rails will add an id column and make it a primary key. If you have a structure.sql file, you’d find statements like ADD CONSTRAINT table_name_pkey PRIMARY KEY (id) which do exactly that.

Bonus: How did I find it?

It took me quite a while to figure this out, I’m sharing my abridged (because I was flailing around a lot) methodology in hopes that it might be helpful to you when debugging - if you know a better way, do share!

  • Did a GitHub search in the Rails repo for the UnknownPrimaryKey error. There were a few results that were in the form finder_class.primary_key, so I assumed it was a method on the model (and confirmed that by playing around in the rails console).
  • Did another search for "def primary_key" (“primary_key” alone gave too many results), this led to ActiveRecord::AttributeMethods::PrimaryKey.
  • Wasn’t sure that this was the correct method but I attempted to follow the code through (GitHub’s jump to definition was a godsend) and got a little stuck/distracted by trying to figure out what class connection referred to.
  • After a bit of poking around in the console, I recalled seeing this class called TracePoint, and decided to give it a try:

    trace = TracePoint.new(:raise) do |tp|
        p [tp.lineno, tp.event, tp.raised_exception]
    trace.enable { ExampleModel.first }
  • This gave an extremely long trace 🤯 good thing I could search in my terminal, after grepping for primary_keys I came across this set of calls, which confirmed that the method was in PostgreSQL::SchemaStatements

    [48, ActiveRecord::ConnectionAdapters::SchemaCache, :primary_keys, :call]
    [53, ActiveRecord::ConnectionAdapters::SchemaCache, :data_source_exists?, :call]
    [146, ActiveRecord::ConnectionAdapters::SchemaStatements, :primary_key, :call]
    [355, ActiveRecord::ConnectionAdapters::PostgreSQL::SchemaStatements, :primary_keys, :call]


Written by Nick who is a indie-hacker wannabe, living in sunny Singapore. Twitter | GitHub