This software is all about demonstrating the capabilities and usage of the ‘scoped_search’ plugin github.com/wvanbergen/scoped_search. The scoped_search is a Rails plugin that let a user easily search ActiveRecord models with a simple query language using a named scope. The scoped search can be used by the programmer as well as the end user. It includes a syntax auto completer to get the end users familiar with the query syntax.
The demo application has two pages Books and Authors, an Author has many Books and a Book belongs to an Author. In the Books page there is a search bar at the top to allow the user to search for Books. A running demo can be found on scope-search-demo.heroku.com
$ git clone git://github.com/abenari/scoped_search_demo_app.git $ bundle install $ rake db:migrate $ rake db:seed
Blogs:
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abenari’s blog: scopedsearch.wordpress.com
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wvanbergen’s blog posts: techblog.floorplanner.com/tag/scoped_search
Scoped search runs on both Rails 2 and 3.
The GUI part of the plugin can use Prototype or JQuery java-script library. If you are using JQuery you’ll need ‘jquery.js’ and ‘jquery-ui.js’ in the ‘public/javascript’ folder. You can find more info about JQuery here:
Style sheets files are in the folder to the public/stylesheets folder on your app. The styles that begin with .auto_complete are the ones that set the auto-completer widget style.
On app/views/layouts/application.html.erb you should include the needed javascript files for example you can use the following lines
<%= javascript_include_tag "jquery.js", "jquery-ui.js" %> <%= stylesheet_link_tag 'jquery-ui.css' %>
In the model you should define the searchable objects and how they will be used in the search language. In the Books model you can find the following lines:
scoped_search :on => :name, :complete_value => :true, :default_order => true scoped_search :on => :description, :complete_value => :false scoped_search :in => :author, :on => :last_name, :complete_value => true, :rename => :"author.last" scoped_search :in => :author, :on => :first_name, :complete_value => true, :rename => :"author.first"
The :on mark the column name in the database, :in specify relation, :only_explicit exclude a search term from the free text search. The :complete_value make the auto completer suggest values to the user, :rename will rename the search term. Renaming some items to have the same beginning and have a dot in the name as demonstrated by ‘author.first’ and ‘author.last’ will make the auto completer suggest just ‘author’ for both to make the suggestion list shorter, ones the user type ‘author.’ it will complete the rest of the options (e.g. ‘first’ and ‘last’ in this example)
The following two methods are used for showing the filtered list of books and auto-complete the search syntax.
index
@books = Book.search_for(params[:search], :order => params[:order]).all(:include => :author)
rescue => e
flash[:error] = e.to_s
@books= Book.search_for ''
end
def auto_complete_search
begin
@items = Book.complete_for(params[:search])
rescue ScopedSearch::QueryNotSupported => e
@items = [{:error =>e.to_s}]
end
render :json => @items
end
<div id="books_search">
<%= form_tag books_path, :method => :get do %>
<%= auto_complete_field_tag_jquery(:search, params[:search], {:placeholder => "Type Space For Search Options"}) %>
<button id='submit_search' style="font-size: 12px;">Search</button>
<% end -%>
</div>
The following lines needs to be added to the config/routes.rb file
resources :books do get :auto_complete_search, :on => :collection