The scoped_search gem makes it easy to search your ActiveRecord models. Searching is performed using a query string, which should be passed to the named_scope search_for. Based on a definition in what fields to look, it will build query conditions and return those as a named scope.
Scoped search is great if you want to offer a simple yet powerful search box to your users and build a query based on the search string they enter. It comes with a built-in search syntax auto-completer and a value auto-completer. It also comes with a set of helpers that makes it easy to create a clean web UI with sorting and an ajax auto-completer.
A demo application using the scoped search can be found here: github.com/abenari/scoped_search_demo_app A running version of the demo application can be found here: scope-search-demo.heroku.com A Rails 3.2 demo with assets pipeline and twitter bootstrap: theme github.com/abenari/search-demo2
Add the following line in your Gemfile, and run bundle install:
gem "scoped_search"
Scoped search 4.x supports Rails 4.2 to 5.0, with Ruby 2.0.0 or higher. Use previous versions, e.g. 3.x to support older versions of Rails or Ruby.
Scoped search requires you to define the fields you want to search in:
class User < ActiveRecord::Base scoped_search on: [:first_name, :last_name] end
For more information about options and using fields from relations, see the project wiki on search definitions: github.com/wvanbergen/scoped_search/wiki/search-definition
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).
User.search_for('my search string').each { |user| ... }
The result is returned as named_scope. Because of this, you can actually chain the call with other scopes, or with will_paginate. An example:
class Project < ActiveRecord::Base scoped_search on: [:name, :description] named_scope :public, conditions: { public: true } end # using chained named_scopes and will_paginate in your controller Project.public.search_for(params[:q]).paginate(page: params[:page], include: :tasks)
If you include a :profile option to the scoped_search call, the fields specified will only be searched when you include this :profile into the search_for command as well:
class User < ActiveRecord::Base scoped_search on: :public_information scoped_search on: :private_information, profile: :members end
This will only search the :public_information column:
User.search_for('blah blah blah')
And this will only search the :private_information column:
User.search_for('blah blah blah', profile: :members)
More information about usage can be found in the project wiki: github.com/wvanbergen/scoped_search/wiki/usage
The search query language is simple, but supports several constructs to support more complex queries:
- words
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require every word to be present, e.g.:
some search keywords - phrases
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use quotes for multi-word phrases, e.g.
"police car" - negation
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look for “everything but”, e.g.
police -uniform,-"police car",police NOT car - logical keywords
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make logical constructs using AND, OR, &&, ||, &, | operators, e.g.
uniform OR car,scoped && search - parentheses
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to structure logic e.g.
"police AND (uniform OR car)" - comparison operators
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to search in numerical or temporal fields, e.g.
> 22,< 2009-01-01 - explicit fields
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search only in the given field. e.g.
username = root,created_at > 2009-01-01 - NULL checks
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using the
set?andnull?operator with a field name, e.g.null? graduated_at,set? parent_id
A complex query example to look for Ruby on Rails programmers without cobol experience, over 18 years old, with a recently updated record and a non-lame nickname:
("Ruby" OR "Rails") -cobol, age >= 18, updated_at > 2009-01-01 && nickname !~ l33t
For more info, see the the project wiki: github.com/wvanbergen/scoped_search/wiki/query-language
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Project wiki: github.com/wvanbergen/scoped_search/wiki
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Issue tracker: github.com/wvanbergen/scoped_search/issues
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RDoc documentations: www.rubydoc.info/gems/scoped_search
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Source code: github.com/wvanbergen/scoped_search
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See CHANGELOG.rdoc for the changes to this library over time.
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See CONTRIBUTING.rdoc if you want to report bugs, or help out on this project.
This plugin is released under the MIT license (see LICENSE).
This plugin was originally developed for Floorplanner.com by Willem van Bergen (github.com/wvanbergen) with help from Wes Hays (github.com/weshays). The current maintainer is Amos Benari (github.com/abenari).