Noob needs help with search page

Rails
1

In an attempt to learn RoR, I’m porting a simple contact manager app I
wrote in PHP/MySQL to RoR. I’ve gotten most of it to work and learned a
lot along the way, but I simply cannot get the searching to work, and
I’m sure I’m just making it harder than it really is. I sure could use a
hand. I have a search page that has a text field and a pulldown box with
the following options that coralate with the fields in the db:

Table name == contacts
Field names:

firstName
lastName
email1
email2
phone1
phone2
street
city
state
zip
birthDay
notes

…and displayed the results.

So if I want a search page, what do I do? What do I put in my
contacts_controller (def search … I’m assuming),
my search.rhtml? Do I need a results page too, or do they get posted in
the same page? Do I have to add anything
to a view, too?

Many, many thanks!!! (I’m pulling my hair out!)

2

try using acts_as_ferret. you just need to index each field in your
contacts model.

Plan Alpha wrote:

In an attempt to learn RoR, I’m porting a simple contact manager app I
wrote in PHP/MySQL to RoR. I’ve gotten most of it to work and learned a
lot along the way, but I simply cannot get the searching to work, and
I’m sure I’m just making it harder than it really is. I sure could use a
hand. I have a search page that has a text field and a pulldown box with
the following options that coralate with the fields in the db:

Table name == contacts
Field names:

firstName
lastName
email1
email2
phone1
phone2
street
city
state
zip
birthDay
notes

…and displayed the results.

So if I want a search page, what do I do? What do I put in my
contacts_controller (def search … I’m assuming),
my search.rhtml? Do I need a results page too, or do they get posted in
the same page? Do I have to add anything
to a view, too?

Many, many thanks!!! (I’m pulling my hair out!)

3

Also, I don’t need anything too fancy like act_as_ferret or act_as_sol,
just a simple MySQL LIKE search will work fine. Links to tutorials or
examples would be great!
Thanks