So I've got a model called Item and one of its properties is called "tags". It's just string that is a simple comma separated list of tags associated with the item. I'm trying to do two things. First create a list of items with the most common tags (the top ten or so) and second allow the user to click on a link that will show all the items with the selected tag.
My problem is actually with the second task. Retrieving records that contain the tag "dog" for example is pretty simple, however I ran into a problem when I needed to retrieve records with the tag "not a dog". Whenever I search for records with the tag "dog" it also returns the records with the tag "not a dog" because "dog" is in "not a dog".
It took me a while but I got something that does what I want it to do, but I'm just not convinced it's the best way to go about doing things. Here's what I got:
@items = Item.find(:all, :conditions => ['tags LIKE ? and folder_id = ?', '%' + params[:tag] + '%', @folder.id])
@items.delete_if { |item| tags = item.tags.split(',')
delete = true
for tag in tags tag.downcase! tag.strip!
if tag == params[:tag] delete = false
end end
delete }
Whenever params[:tag] is "dog" this succeeds in only picking out the items that contain the tag "dog" but not ones that contain similar tags such as "not a dog". But like I said it just seems icky and not cumbersome.
Is there some way to make the find command, or the SQL syntax for like handle searching through comma separated lists?
