scoped_search

This simple plugin will make it easy to search your ActiveRecord models. Searching is performed using a query string, which should be passed to the named_scope search_for that uses SQL %LIKE% conditions for searching.

Installation

You can enable scoped_search as a Ruby gem. First, you have to install the gem on your system.

  gem sources -a http://gems.github.com
  sudo gem install wvanbergen-scoped_search

Now, you must enable the gem in your +environment.rb+ configuration:

  Rails::Initializer.run do |config|
    ...
    config.gem 'wvanbergen-scoped_search', :lib => 'scoped_search'
  end

You can use scoped_search as a Rails plugin as well, but this is deprecated. Simply download or clone scoped_search into your +vendor/plugins+ directory of your project.

Usage

First, you have to specify in what columns should be searched:

  class Project < ActiveRecord::Base
    searchable_on :name, :description
  end

Now, the search_for scope is available for queries. You should pass a query string to the scope. This can be empty or nil, in which case all no search conditions are set (and all records will be returned).

  Project.search_for(params[:q]).each { |project| ... }

The search query language is simple. It supports these constructs:

• words: some search keywords
• phrases: "a single search phrase"
• negation: "look for this" -"but do not look for this phrase and this" -word

This functionality is build on named_scope. The searchable_on statement creates a named_scope "search_for". Because of this, you can actually chain the call with other scopes. For example, this can be very useful if you only want to search in projects that are accessible by a given user.

  class Project < ActiveRecord::Base
    searchable_on :name, :description
    named_scope :accessible_by, lambda { |user| ... }
  end

  # using chained named_scopes and will_paginate
  Project.accessible_by(current_user).search_for(params[:q]).paginate(:page => params[:page], :include => :tasks)

Disclaimer

This Rails plugin is written by Willem van Bergen for the Floorplanner.com website. It is released under the MIT license. Please contact me (willem AT vanbergen DOT org if you have any suggestions or remarks.