# Advanced search/filter use cases **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [December 19, 2005, 9:32pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/advanced-search-filter-use-cases/50671 "2005-12-19T21:32:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Erin\_Mulder](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Erin\_Mulder](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Erin_Mulder)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2005, 9:32pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/advanced-search-filter-use-cases/50671/1 "2005-12-19T21:32:19Z")
I’ve been working on an application lately that has a lot of advanced search and filtering functionality (with ranges and substring searches for each attribute). Despite being a pretty common use case, this isn’t supported particularly well by any framework I’ve used, including Rails. I’d like to fix that. 🙂 Right now, my major pet peeves are: 1. Long, ugly, repetitive methods that check each criterion for nil/empty and then append to arrays of join tables, conditions and condition variables. 2. Unsettling mix of model and controller responsibility when constructing Paginators 3. Reduced form helper support for form elements that aren’t linked to a model class 4. A bit too much ugly code necessary to get pagination links to send along the original search params 5. No built in support for sortable table headers (okay, so this one is easy to implement… but still… it would be so easy to add the magic) My current plan of attack is to add a few helper methods and extend ActiveRecord and Pagination to support these search features in a more elegant way. For example, imagine you could do something like: @bobs = Person.search(:min\_birth\_date =\> ‘2002-05-01’, :max\_birth\_date =\> ‘2003-05-01’, :first\_name\_like =\> ‘obert’, :last\_name\_starts\_with =\> ‘Mac’, :gender =\> ‘Male’) and have it recognize the “min\_”, “max\_” and “\_like” modifiers and automatically build a query with the appropriate conditions and condition variables. Ideally, this search method would have a way of automatically handling joins for cross-table criteria, and also of doing a substring “keyword” search across several named fields. All of this would be made to work with paginate as well. On the view side, a simple helper could write out column header links that would rerun the search with the correct order\_bys. A switch on the existing pagination\_links helper would tell it to include all of the criteria params from the original search. A basic search method/page could be generated as part of scaffold (for those who use it as a reference). Has anyone already done something similar? Or solved this problem in a more elegant way? If so, I’d love to hear about it! If not, I may take a stab at this over the holidays and see what I come up with. Let me know if you want to help! Cheers, Erin ---
**Author:** ![Erin\_Mulder](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Erin\_Mulder](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Erin_Mulder)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2005, 10:39pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/advanced-search-filter-use-cases/50671/2 "2005-12-19T22:39:36Z")
You might have a look at this for the dynamic sql stuff: [http://brainspl.at/articles/2005/12/02/build-ar-base-finds-conditions-clause-dynamically-take-one](http://brainspl.at/articles/2005/12/02/build-ar-base-finds-conditions-clause-dynamically-take-one) John Erin Mulder wrote: > nil/empty and then append to arrays of join tables, conditions and > > @bobs = Person.search(:min\_birth\_date =\> ‘2002-05-01’, > joins for cross-table criteria, and also of doing a substring “keyword” > Has anyone already done something similar? Or solved this problem in a > [http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails](http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails) > – > John D. > Great Basin Development > P.O.Box 3503, Reno, Nevada 89505 > Cell: (775) 772-7336 > removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid > [http://www.gbdev.com/](http://www.gbdev.com/) ---
**Author:** ![Erin\_Mulder](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Erin\_Mulder](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Erin_Mulder)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2005, 11:43pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/advanced-search-filter-use-cases/50671/3 "2005-12-19T23:43:17Z")
Hi, I have come across this problem before and it was the main motivation for the ActiveForm [1] class that I created. It allowed validations to be used for non-activerecord objects. The next step I made a ActiveSearch class that defined a bunch of macros similar to search\_field :type\_id, :foreign\_key search\_field :created\_before, :date search\_field :created\_from, :period search\_field :include\_summary, :boolean search\_field :component\_id, :foreign\_key, :join =\> ‘components’ search\_field :version\_id, :foreign\_key, :join =\> ‘versions’, :join\_key =\> ‘affects\_version\_id’ … This class also had a gen\_sql that returned two values conditions and joins that could be passed onto the paginator or directly into find etc. The class also had methods to generate the params from a particular search so I could link to it from sorted\_link\_tos or paginator links. Of course it added benefit that it did not produce param if the value was equivelent to the default. The only thing I have yet to complete is correctly generating the order\_bys for join tables but I only need that in one place so I have not bothered. [1] [http://www.realityforge.org/articles/2005/12/02/validations-for-non-activerecord-model-objects](http://www.realityforge.org/articles/2005/12/02/validations-for-non-activerecord-model-objects) – Cheers, Peter D. Blog: [http://www.RealityForge.org](http://www.RealityForge.org)