#111 Advanced Search Form (revised)

Nov 17, 2011 | 6 minutes | Views, Forms, Search

It is often best to use a GET request when submitting a search form, however if it is an advanced search form with a lot of fields then this may not be ideal. Here I show how to create a search resource to handle this.

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Murat Ustuntas about 13 years ago

Thank you Ryan for this advanced search screencast.

Is there any suggestion for us about fulltext search engines? In Ryan`s screencasts, before,
he show us Sphinx and Sunspot, what about Solr?

Regards.

Roger Braun almost 13 years ago

Maybe you could also take a look at Picky.

Daniel Errante about 13 years ago

Murat: Sunspot is a ruby wrapper for Solr. Another search engine to check out is ElasticSearch (and the Tire gem for it). It has some nice features like distributed indices for high availability and it's a lot easier than to set up than solr.

Murat Ustuntas about 13 years ago

Thank you Daniel.
I will just look at ElasticSearch with Tire gem. I assume that i would integrate ElasticSearch in my project.

farukca about 13 years ago

I had used ElasticSearch with mebla gem, it was working so good and easy to configure on production. But I will try solr this time, because it's mongoid configuration is so simple.
Murat hocam, sen nerede kullanacaksın fulltext aramayı ?

Murat Ustuntas about 13 years ago

farukca: I just try to develop a file flowing. We have some papers comming from other companies. These files includes some unordered information. So somebody make ocr or writedown this unordered fields. And searching on it.

Cristiano Betta about 13 years ago

Just a small comment on the pruning of old searches. I think it's generally bad behaviour to remove old searches. People might link to it, expect it to remain, and boom, suddenly it's gone.

It's probably better to check if a specific search already exists before creation and redirect to it if need be.

Jonas M about 13 years ago

What's wrong with not having a database backend at all, configuring the attribute accessors manually and have the create action of the controller show the search result (after possible validations)? I guess re-using the search has its niceities, but how often will it actually get used in an average app?

Dom about 13 years ago

There's nothing wrong with that approach either. I think it depends on the specific use case.

I have both strategies in one of my apps. Visitor searches on the public site are not stored, but admin searches in the marketing module are because they provide the criteria for targeting a segment of a marketing list which is then used by a backend job to send emails. Since the list changes as subscribers come and go, having the list based on search criteria is essential.

So this type of advanced search definitely has it's use case. Thanks for the revision Ryan.

Austin Schneider almost 13 years ago

I agree with @Dom. Nothing wrong, just different use cases.

For the non-db backed, basic approach I'd make my route a singular resource

          ruby
        
resource :search

The controller could just about stay the same, except for the show action:

          ruby
        
def show
  @search = Search.last
end

And then the model could be something like:

          ruby
        
class Search
  class << self
    def create!(attrs = {})
      new(attrs).save!
    end

    def last
      # retrieve the attrs from storage
      new(attrs)
    end
  end

  def initialize(attrs = {})
    @attrs = attrs
  end
  
  def keywords
    @attrs[:keywords]
  end

  def save!
    # store the attrs somewhere
    # maybe serialized in the session, or in mongo or memcached
  end
end

By "non-db backed" I mean you don't have to store every search, but you'd still need some type of storage. It's possible not to use storage by showing the search from the create action, but I think it's good practice to only display pages from a GET request.

Austin Schneider almost 13 years ago

While it's fresh in my brain, here's an example for using the session.

Controller:

          ruby
        
def new
  @search = SessionSearch.new(session)
end

def create
  @search = SessionSearch.create!(session, params[:search])
  redirect_to @search
end

def show
  @search = SearchSession.last
end

Model:

          ruby
        
class SessionSearch
  class << self
    def create!(session, attrs = {})
      new(session, attrs).save!
    end
    
    def last(session)
      attrs = YAML.load(session['search_payload'])
      new(session, attrs)
    end
  end
  
  def initialize(session, attrs = {})
    @session = session
    @attrs = attrs
  end
  
  def save!
    @session['search_payload'] = YAML.dump(@attrs)
  end
end

There's probably ways to make this cleaner, but I think the idea is there.

xanview almost 13 years ago

Would love something like this where mongoid is used :)

olegbno almost 13 years ago

For some season I am getting:

          
        
Missing partial properties/property with {:handlers=>[:erb, :rjs, :builder, :rhtml, :rxml], :formats=>[:html], :locale=>[:en, :en]} in view paths "C:/rails-code/prevu/app/views", "C:/Ruby192/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/sorcery-0.7.4/app/views"

Andy Sharkey almost 13 years ago

I'm receiving the same error...

George Githinji almost 13 years ago

Am also receiving the same error

George Githinji almost 13 years ago

explicitly rendering the collection partial,

          ruby
        
<%=render :partial=> 'product', :collection=>@search.products%> 

instead of the shortcut render @search.products

sorts the problem

Antek Drzewiecki almost 13 years ago

How would you add search for category name with a text_field instead of id ?

products = Product.include(:category).order...... products = products.where("categories.name like ?", "%bla bla bla%")

Something like this? I know i can make category name an auto complete text search Railscasts #102 Auto-Complete Association (revised) like and just pass the category id.. Just looking for alternative ways..

Marcus64 almost 13 years ago

I have tested this advanced search method for my application and it's working fine.

My question is how can i implement field calculation in that model?

Example for products models showing here, if i need to have "totals of products selected", "total product's cost" and "average cost", where can i put these calculation methods?

James Stephenson over 12 years ago

I have been going through this railscast but can't seem to get the search results to actually display. When I click on the search button, the log shows that it is doing the search, but the only thing that appears on the view is the heading for the Show page (Search Results). The partial for searches (_product.htlm.erb) does not appear to even be accessed.

Any ideas?

Nunzio Fiore over 12 years ago

Perhaps it's a dumb question but imagine that you have 400.000 products

in this chain of wheres conditions (with pagination)

          ruby
        
 products = Product.order(:name)
    products = products.where("name like ?", "%#{keywords}%") if keywords.present?
    products = products.where(category_id: category_id) if category_id.present?
    products = products.where("price >= ?", min_price) if min_price.present?
    products = products.where("price <= ?", max_price) if max_price.present?
    products.page(params[:page])

The search execute the first, and then filter with the other where condition so you have a 400.000 products search that kill performances, or am I totally (I wish) wrong?

Taryn East about 11 years ago

later versions of rails do not perform the search until you actually use the results. So every one of the calls in the code just builds a set of conditions.

it will not hit the database until you use "all" or "each" on "products"

Jake Vose over 12 years ago

Hi! I started with the code from this screencast, switched it to ModestModel to remove the persistence, and then moved over to Mongoid. Just wanted to say thanks!

Bernard Banta over 11 years ago

Thank you Ryan for this.

chrishawk over 11 years ago

Awesome episode! I was wondering though, how might you handle AND statements for searching on a has_many association? The OR (contains any) is simple enough, just an IN statement. I'm curious how this might handle the other situation.

Bruno Faviero over 11 years ago

How do you filter a filter by another filter?
Meaning, if I click a category like "Brand", How do I have another filter Model with models from only that brand?

Taryn East about 11 years ago

How would I build tests for the "find_products" method?

bparanj over 8 years ago

You would provide different data set to test different search possibilities. For instance, provide keywords and check if it returns the expected products.

idrissa diallo about 9 years ago

Can Anyone help.
I am having an issue to use this in rails 4 app.

HattieBanh over 8 years ago

I think my hands are growing from an incorrect place as I don't get how you guys doing it. I have nothing but mistakes there.((