How to do a case insensitive search with multiple elements?

rubyonrails-talk
1

Hi

I have a smallish problem

If a = ["Joe","John"]

then

Model.find_all_by_firstname(a)

works well.

Except when the case of the characters is in dispute - how can I make the finder method case insensitive? All the discussions I find concern themselves with the singular case, but not with the case of an array being passed.

Thanks for reading this!

Pieter

2

Model.find_all_by_firstname(a.collect{|a| a.downcase})

3

Will that work if the names in the db include upper case chars? I think the compare in the find needs to be case insensitive rather than what is being compared against being forced to lower case.

Colin

4

As long as you're aware that using LOWER(first_name) will prevent any use of an index on first_name.

You can also look at your particular database to see if it supports a case-insensitive match. MySQL is case-insensitive by default (so I'm guessing that's not what you're using :wink:

If you're using PostgreSQL, you probably could find this via Google:

http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/FAQ#How_do_I_perform_regular_expression_searches_and_case-insensitive_regular_expression_searches.3F_How_do_I_use_an_index_for_case-insensitive_searches.3F

Note the part that discusses the CITEXT type and the use of an index on the lower(column_name).

-Rob

Rob Biedenharn Rob@AgileConsultingLLC.com http://AgileConsultingLLC.com/ rab@GaslightSoftware.com http://GaslightSoftware.com/