were you just doing = comparisons then you could extract a hash of conditions from the params and pass that directly. for what you're doing you might look at using the ez_where plugin:
http://opensvn.csie.org/ezra/rails/plugins/dev/ez_where/
-faisal
Also check out ActiveRecord::Extensions for more hash-based conditions suck as field_like, field_contains, field_lt, field_gt, field_ne, etc. (http://www.continuousthinking.com/tags/arext).
However, hash-based conditions are added together with AND rather than OR, so it's not much use for this particular prooblem.
I am just about to release 0.7.0 for ActiveRecord::Extensions. I am thinking of including OR functionality. Please email me privately if you have comments or suggestions on this.
I am planning to have: Book.find :all, :conditions=>{ :name_like => "Star Wars", :or_name_like=>"Star Trek" }
generate SQL like: name LIKE "Star Wars"OR name LIKE "Star Trek"
It's limitation is that it will not be able to group OR'd selectors, but it provides basic OR capabilities. thought?
