Does anyone have any suggestions at all?
I just found some old code I wrote that adds a basic search method to active record. You'll probably want to extend it (add fix bugs!) but hopefully it'll give you a starting point and show you how you can approach this problem.
module ActiveRecord class Base def self.search(keywords) keywords = keywords.split(" ") sql_conditions = ""
keywords.each do |word| sql_conditions << "("
columns.each do |column| sql_conditions << "#{column.name} LIKE '%#{word}%' OR " if column.type == :string end
sql_conditions.gsub!(/OR $/, '') sql_conditions << ") AND " end sql_conditions.gsub!(/ AND $/, '')
find(:all, :conditions => sql_conditions) end end end
Stick that in a file called active_record_extensions.rb (or something) and save it to lib/. You'll need add a require line to your environment.rb: require 'lib/active_record_extensions'
You should then be able to do a basic search like this: ClassMate.search("stephen bartholomew")
Hope that helps,
Steve
