# Pagination - why is it this hard? **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [January 31, 2006, 7:42pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/pagination-why-is-it-this-hard/53302 "2006-01-31T19:42:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![seanhussey](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@seanhussey](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/seanhussey)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2006, 7:42pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/pagination-why-is-it-this-hard/53302/1 "2006-01-31T19:42:09Z")
Hi everyone, I’m at the end of my rope on this. I can’t get pagination to work with anything but a standard find on a model. If I try to do a search and customize the pagination, I get lots of different variations. My thought was to have the list action do what it does, but to pass it a list of search conditions from the search action. So, if search determines that we need to get a list of all people in X department, it sets up searchconditions and tries to pass it to list. No luck there. My basic question is, what’s the best practice way to paginate over custom finds? The search results usually come up ok, it’s just that the pagination links don’t pass on the right parameters, so they either don’t work, or they just go back to the regular list, even though the action is search (in the URL). The most recent attempt has normal listings working correctly, but when I perform a search (which displays correctly) and click on any of the pagination links, since there’s no passing of the search variables. I know how to do this, as I’ve done it a million times in other projects, but I can’t find the Rails way to do this that makes me say, “Oh, magic!” And, since I’m using rails, I’d rather not go and build this the way I would have in Perl. I’m sorry if I come off as harsh, but I’m incredibly frustrated by this. I’ve been hacking on it for hours now, and I can’t launch this version of my app without proper pagination. The deadline is today, and I figured this would be a lot easier than it seems to be. Code: Controller: def list @person\_pages, @people = paginate :person, :order =\> ‘last\_name ASC’, :per\_page =\> 20 end def search searchconditions = [] if params.include?(:letter) searchconditions = [“LOWER(last\_name) LIKE ?”, params[:letter].to\_str + “%”] elsif params.include?(:department) searchconditions = [“department\_id = ?”, params[:department]] elsif session[:q] if params[:q] session[:q] = params[:q].downcase searchconditions = [ “LOWER(username) LIKE ? OR LOWER(first\_name) LIKE ? OR LOWER(last\_name) LIKE ? OR LOWER(preferred\_name) LIKE ?”, “%” + session[:q] + “%”, “%” + session[:q] + “%”, “%” + session[:q] + “%”, “%” + session[:q] + “%” ] end else session[:q] = ‘’ end if searchconditions.empty? flash[:note] = “You must enter a search phrase to search.” redirect\_to :action =\> “list” else @person\_pages, @people = paginate :person, :per\_page =\> 20, :conditions =\> searchconditions, :order =\> ‘last\_name ASC’ render :action =\> “list” end end View: \<%= link\_to “Previous”, { :page =\> @person\_pages.current.previous } if @person\_pages.current.previous -%\> \<% pagination\_links\_each(@person\_pages, :window\_size =\> 4) do |n| %\> \<%= n %\> \<% end %\> \<%= link\_to “Next”, { :page =\> @person\_pages.current.next } if @person\_pages.current.next -%\> Resources I’ve used to (it seems) no avail: [http://api.rubyonrails.com/classes/ActionController/Pagination.html](http://api.rubyonrails.com/classes/ActionController/Pagination.html) [http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/pages/HowtoPagination](http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/pages/HowtoPagination) > **[BigBold - Informasi Tentang Bisnis dan Marketing](http://www.bigbold.com)** > > BigBold ialah situs yang memberikan segala macam Informasi Tentang Bisnis dan Marketing [http://railsexpress.de/blog/articles/2005/11/04/faster-pagination](http://railsexpress.de/blog/articles/2005/11/04/faster-pagination) ---
**Author:** ![seanhussey](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@seanhussey](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/seanhussey)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2006, 7:51pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/pagination-why-is-it-this-hard/53302/2 "2006-01-31T19:51:16Z")
Pagination can be a little frustrating, but your example doesn’t look too bad. If I understand your question, you’re just having problems w/ the links passing the correct parameters? Just use this: \<%= link\_to “Previous”, { :page =\> @person\_pages.current.previous, :letter =\> params[:letter], :department =\> params[:department], :q =\> params[:q] } if @person\_pages.current.previous -%\> \<% pagination\_links\_each(@person\_pages, :window\_size =\> 4) do |n| - %\> \<%= link\_to n,{:page =\> n, :letter =\> params[:letter], :department =\> params[:department], :q =\> params[:q]} %\> \<% end %\> \<%= link\_to “Next”, { :page =\> @person\_pages.current.next , :letter =\> params[:letter], :department =\> params[:department], :q =\> params[:q] } if @person\_pages.current.next -%\> The “magick” is rails will only supply parameters on the query string if their params has a value (ie, each link won’t have &letter=&department=&q=) Also, your searchcondition can be more easily written as: searchconditions = [ “LOWER(username) LIKE :q OR LOWER(first\_name) LIKE :q OR LOWER(last\_name) LIKE :q OR LOWER(preferred\_name) LIKE :q”, { :q =\> “%#{session[:q]}%” }] ---
**Author:** ![seanhussey](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@seanhussey](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/seanhussey)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2006, 10:02pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/pagination-why-is-it-this-hard/53302/3 "2006-01-31T22:02:42Z")
Wow, what an outpouring! Big Thank Yous to Jon, Kevin, Mark, and “ym” on #rubyonrails. I think I’ve got this going now. The approach I went with was to create a conditions array in my search action, save it into a session variable, and then redirect\_to the list action. The list action checks for the variable (if nothing, it uses “1 = 1”) and runs the find. So the conditions stay current in the session until another search is run. Your emails have shown me a few more approaches I’m going to need to look at as my searches get more complex. The bit from Kevin about making my own paginator…y’know, it was just that phrase that changed my thinking of “hack this piece of code to work for me” to, well, “make my own paginator.” Again, thank you all so much. It seems like a silly little thing to get stuck on. I really appreciate the help. Sean ---
**Author:** ![seanhussey](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@seanhussey](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/seanhussey)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2006, 6:18pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/pagination-why-is-it-this-hard/53302/4 "2006-02-01T18:18:43Z")
I just wanted to thank everyone again for helping me out yesterday. I pushed the deadline by a couple of hours, but the app is launched and working perfectly. Once again, the Rails community saves someone’s butt. 🙂 Sean