postgresql - Rails Article.find 1 raises ActiveRecord::StatementInvalid on legacy database -

i'm creating rails app on legacy database table. works fine locally, on server hit error whenever article.find(1)

could not log "sql.active_record" event. nomethoderror: undefined method `name' nil:nilclass activerecord::statementinvalid: pg::error: error:  zero-length delimited identifier @ or near """" line 1: select  "articles".* "articles"  "articles"."" = $1 limit 1 

the legacy database has id field, schema describes id with

create_table "articles", :id => false, :force => true |t|   t.decimal  "id", :precision => 10, :scale => 0, :null => false   ... 

note article.find_by_id(1) returns record without problem.

any ideas how fix this?

updated - see below

it turns out, adding following model fixes this:

class article < activerecord::base   set_primary_key :id    ... 

presumably, because rails didn't create table, doesn't know field primary key is. seems little odd though, educated guess warning - or more friendly error message - appreciated.

update: rails 3.2+ above method deprecated. new method follows:

class article < activerecord::base   self.primary_key = :id    ... 

thanks @lboix pointing out!