Search not working with ajax

As find with conditions is being deleted from Rails 3.2. I have re- factored my search code using the new syntax. In any case my find with conditions was throwing errors. (find(:all, :conditions => ['section LIKE ?', "%#{search_item}%"])) Can anyone help in finding out why my instance variable @homepages is returning with nothing from the search.

In my controller I have:-     @homepages = Homepage.search(params[:search])

In my model I have:-     class Homepage < ActiveRecord::Base   def self.search(search_item)     if search_item      self.where('section <= ?', "%#{search_item}%")     else       self.all     end   end end

In my index.js.erb I have:-     $("testsearch").update("<%= escape_javascript(render(@homepages)) %>");

My terminal log shows the search values are being passed correctly, but nothing is being rendered:-     Started GET "/homepages?utf8=%E2%9C%93&search=Gar" for 127.0.0.1 at 2010-10-29 01:27:42 +0100   Processing by HomepagesController#index as JS   Parameters: {"utf8"=>"✓", "search"=>"Gar"}   Homepage Load (0.4ms) SELECT "homepages".* FROM "homepages" WHERE (section <= '%Gar%') Rendered collection (0.0ms) Rendered homepages/index.js.erb (1.9ms) Completed 200 OK in 9036ms (Views: 9.7ms | ActiveRecord: 0.4ms)

It should find at least one record. If I make the if the same as the else it renders all correctly. So why am I not getting any records returned with @homepages. Thanks in advance. Don