live search with one input field for few columns

rubyonrails-talk
1

Hello In Rails Cookbook is example of live search. There is one input field and we are looking for word (words) in TITLE column.

code: def self.search(terms)   find :all,      :conditions =>      [(["(LOWER(title) LIKE ?)"] * terms.size ).join(" AND "), * terms.flatten] end # terms is an array with word (words)

My question is: How to change SEARCH function to search word (words) in more then one column eg. TITLE, BODY ... Greate example of live search is here: www.gotapi.com

Greetings

2

This is so ugly, I can't believe I'm posting it...

[ "(" + (["LOWER(title) LIKE ?"] * terms.size).join(" AND ") + ")" + " OR " + "(" + (["LOWER(body) LIKE ?"] * terms.size).join(" AND ") + ")", * terms.flatten * 2 ]

Be careful with the line breaks or it won't work.

One problem with this (besides the field names being hard coded and it being a big, ugly mess) is that it will only find matches for one field. In other words, if a user entered "My favorite poem", there would only be a match if all of those words were in the title OR if all of those words were in the body - it won't find the "poem" if its title is "My Favorite Things" and the body contains "poem".

Also, I assume that you have something like this in your code to put the wildcard characters in with your search terms:

terms.map {|t| "%#{t}%"}

If you're doing more advanced searching, you might look into some plugins. I've heard many people talk about acts_as_ferret (with mixed reactions). Another option could be to allow the user to select what field he wants to search with a radio button list that corresponds to the possible search fields. You could then pass this value into a "field" variable for the search (i.e., "LOWER(#{field}) LIKE ?"...).

If you need something to work quickly, go ahead and try my solution. If you need something to work *well*, you might want to look elsewhere. :slight_smile:

-Kyle