Question

class Office < ActiveRecord::Base
    has_many :users

    searchable do
       text :name
       location :coordinates do
           Sunspot::Util::Coordinates.new(latitude, longitude) 
       end 
    end     
end

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
    belongs_to  :office

    searchable do
        text :name, :default_boost => 2
        text :description
    end
end

With this kind of a setup, how can I search using SunSpot (on Solr) on Rails for a user within a given lat/long? For example, I want to be able to do this:

  @search  = User.search() do
    fulltext(params[:q])
    with(:coordinates).near(@lat, @long, :precision => 5)
  end

The following works just fine:

  @search  = Office.search() do
    fulltext(params[:q])
    with(:coordinates).near(@lat, @long, :precision => 5)
  end

What is the best way to accomplish this given that the lat/long for each User really lives in the Office class?

Answer 1

The office association should be in scope inside your User’s searchable block.

Given that, here’s what I would start with (untested, off the top of my head, etc):

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to  :office

  searchable do
    text :name, :default_boost => 2
    text :description
    location :coordinates do
      Sunspot::Util::Coordinates.new(office.latitude, office.longitude)
    end
  end
end

Fetching values for associated objects in a block like this is actually a pretty common pattern for handling denormalization with Sunspot.