Rails on PostgreSQL

When you write a Rails app that uses PostgreSQL you'll probably see your development log filled with log entries like this:

 SQL (0.5ms)   SELECT a.attname, format_type(a.atttypid, a.atttypmod), d.adsrc, a.attnotnull
 FROM pg_attribute a LEFT JOIN pg_attrdef d
 ON a.attrelid = d.adrelid AND a.attnum = d.adnum
 WHERE a.attrelid = '"reading_lists"'::regclass
 AND a.attnum > 0 AND NOT a.attisdropped
 ORDER BY a.attnum

This is all boilerplate stuff and definitely not part of your app. So, how to get rid of it? Just use Evgeniy Dolzhenko's silent-postgres gem. Put this in your Rails 3 Gemfile (or add a config.gem entry in your environment.rb file for Rails 2):

group :development, :test do 
  gem 'silent-postgres'
end

And that's it. Cleaner logs, huzzah!

The gem itself is only about 60 lines of code. It creates an initializer that includes itself into ActiveRecord::ConnectionAdapters::PostgreSQLAdapter and uses alias_method_chain to silence output from a couple of methods - tables, pk_and_sequence_for, and a few others. Good stuff!