Build static dropdown menu for simple search Rails 3

Question

I have a simple search working in my rails app, but it only searches a single column of my table. I'm trying to add a simple dropdown menu with options like "last_name" and "city" so the user can select the column to search.

In my view I have:

<%= form_tag teachers_path, :method => 'get', :id => "teachers_search" do %>
<%= hidden_field_tag :direction, params[:direction]%>
<%= hidden_field_tag :sort, params[:sort]%>
  <p>
    <%= text_field_tag :search, params[:search], placeholder: 'First Name' %>
    <%= submit_tag "Search", :first_name => nil %>
  </p>
<% end %>

and in my model:

 def self.search(search)
    if search
      where('first_name LIKE ?', "%#{search}%")
    else
      scoped
    end
  end

Any help greatly appreciated.

sohaibbbhatti · Accepted Answer · 2012-06-21T07:37:39.430

2

You can add a select_tag for your drop down menu

<%= select_tag "search_from", "<option>first_name</option><option>last_name</option><option>city_name</option>".html_safe%>

In your controller you can pass the value in params[:search_from] to your search method. and modify it to include the column name

def self.search(search, column_name)
  if search
    where('? LIKE ?', column_name, "%#{search}%")
  else
    scoped
  end
end

I've written it in a crude way but i hope it gets the message along.

edited Jun 21 '12 at 07:37

answered Jun 21 '12 at 07:32

sohaibbbhatti

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I'm agreed with your approach, but select_tag were bit odd...i've tried to fix it – Naveed Jun 21 '12 at 07:55
Yes. Wrote it really quickly. Mentioned in the last line :) Just wanted to convey the idea along. – sohaibbbhatti Jun 21 '12 at 08:01
@sohaibbbhatti : Thanks I was looking for this only.. you save my time. ;) – Gagan Gami Jun 16 '14 at 13:07

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 21 '12 at 08:03

1

extending @sohaibs's answer dropdown is a good idea if you are only allowing user to filter result with some some fixed attributes

views

<%= select_tag "search_by", options_for_select(['first_name','last_name','city'].map{|o| [o.humanize,o] }) %>
<%= f.text_field 'search' %>

controller

def search
  User.search params[:teacher][:search_by],params[:teacher][:search]
end

and model

def self.search(search_by,search_value)
     where('? LIKE ?', search_by, search_value)
end

Awesome Rails :)

answered Jun 21 '12 at 08:03

Naveed

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Thanks. This all makes sense, but I'm getting a "ArgumentError in Teachers#index, wrong number of arguments (1 for 2)" error message that I can't seem to work through. Is this missing an argument somewhere? – awking Jun 22 '12 at 03:12

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 21 '12 at 07:29

0

Have you tried:

def self.search(column, search)
  # some logic
  where('? LIKE ?', column, "%#{search}%")
  # some logic
end

answered Jun 21 '12 at 07:29

Hauleth

22,873
4
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Build static dropdown menu for simple search Rails 3

3 Answers3

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