Match operator in find

Rails
1

Greetings!

Is there some special syntax required to use the match operator (=~) in
a find operation? Or is it not possible? I’ve got some data items from
an external source that could be capitalized or not. So right now I’m
stuck with doing:

Item.find(:first,
:conditions => [“name = ? or name =?”, Potatoes, potatoes])

I’d prefer to do:

Item.find(:first,
:conditions => [“name =~ ?”, /(P|p)otatoes])

The first works, but it doesn’t seem very Rails-like. I’m getting nil
results on the second.

TIA,
Bill

2

Hi,

You have a bit of a mix of syntax there - the conditions string is sql
so you can’t use the regular expressions in the way you stated. You can
use the LIKE operator though:

Item.find(:first,
:conditions => [“name LIKE ?”, ‘potatoes’])

Hope that helps,

Steve

3

and if you don’t want to take case into account, you can set everything
downcase:
LOWER(name) LIKE :search_value, { search_value => variable.downcase}

for a string match, I usually add some % before/after:
{ search_value => ‘%’ + variable.downcase + ‘%’ }
because my match does not necessarily start or end by the pattern.

4

Nicholas, Stephen,

Thanks to you both. That puts me on the right track. Guess I’m still
recovering from the holiday :wink:

Best regards,
Bill
----- Original Message -----
From: Nicolas B.
To: [email protected]
Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 8:02 AM
Subject: Re: [Rails] match operator in find

and if you don’t want to take case into account, you can set
everything downcase:
LOWER(name) LIKE :search_value, { search_value => variable.downcase}

for a string match, I usually add some % before/after:
{ search_value => ‘%’ + variable.downcase + ‘%’ }
because my match does not necessarily start or end by the pattern.

On 5/30/06, Stephen B. [email protected] wrote:
Hi,

You have a bit of a mix of syntax there - the conditions string is

sql
so you can’t use the regular expressions in the way you stated. You
can
use the LIKE operator though:

Item.find(:first,
           :conditions => ["name LIKE ?", 'potatoes'])

Hope that helps,

Steve


Bill W. wrote:
> Greetings!
>
> Is there some special syntax required to use the match operator

(=~) in
> a find operation? Or is it not possible? I’ve got some data
items from
> an external source that could be capitalized or not. So right now
I’m
> stuck with doing:
>
> Item.find(:first,
> :conditions => [“name = ? or name =?”, Potatoes,
potatoes])
>
> I’d prefer to do:
>
> Item.find(:first,
> :conditions => [“name =~ ?”, /(P|p)otatoes])
>
> The first works, but it doesn’t seem very Rails-like. I’m getting
nil
> results on the second.
>
> TIA,
> Bill
>
>
>
>
>

>
> _______________________________________________
> Rails mailing list
> [email protected]
> http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails
>
>
> 

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29/05/2006
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