Question

An architectural query here I guess.

I’m building a shopping site, when a user sees a results page they can then filter by price, size, brand, store etc. The way I do this is I send the filters up to the url – this works fine. However –

My controller (actually recently moved this logic into the model) has so many if else statements its crazy. My current implementation has:

    ########   different rhs scenarios    ######## 
     if params[:brand] and params[:store]
        @products = Product.search_tank(params[:search], :per_page => @@pp, :page => params[:page], :category_filters => {:store => "#{params[:store]}", :brand => "#{params[:brand]}"})
     elsif params[:store]
       @products = Product.search_tank(params[:search], :per_page => @@pp, :page => params[:page], :category_filters => {:store => "#{params[:store]}"})
     elsif params[:brand]
          @products = Product.search_tank(params[:search], :per_page => @@pp, :page => params[:page], :category_filters => {:brand => "#{params[:brand]}"})
     elsif params[:price]
           @products = Product.search_tank(params[:search], :per_page => @@pp, :page => params[:page], :category_filters => {:price => "#{params[:price]}"})
     else
       @products = Product.search_tank(params[:search], :per_page => @@pp, :page => params[:page])
    end

It basically means I need to have every combination:

1) search

2) search + price

3) search + brand

4) search + store

5) search + size

6) repeat for brand/store etc!!

This can’t be right, surely I don’t have to program every possible combination? I recently discovered params.merge, which looks like at least on the front-end it can help me. I’m a bit of a noob, it makes me think maybe this is where design patterns come in.

Can someone point me in the right direction?

Thanks for all help in advance.

Answer 1

New solution:

options = {}
options.merge!(:store => params[:store]) unless params[:store].blank?
options.merge!(:store => params[:price]) unless params[:price].blank?
options.merge!(:store => params[:brand]) unless params[:brand].blank?
@products = Product.search_tank(params[:search], :per_page => @@pp, :page => params[:page], :category_filters => options