Question

I am trying to create a scope string for a search form. Can I build something like this with scopes:

scopestring = Product.all 
if params[:price].include? 
  scopestring = scopestring + '.free'
if params[:location].include? 
  # same for location 
end 

Obviously I can’t do that, but is there a way to do something similar. Any suggestions? Not a fan of 9 condition IF or case statements to handle various filters on the search page.

If I am going totally in a wrong direction here, what is the best way to handle long conditional statements in Rails? I would prefer staying away from gems.

Answer 1

First, Product.all isn’t a scope, it actually does the search. What you want is Product.scoped. The scope returned is an object, not a string. Assuming that :free is a scope:

products = Product.scoped
if params[:price] == "free"  #your example of include? doesn't make sense
  products = products.free
end

You can simplify it a bit more by refactoring into the model:

class Product < ActiveRecord::Base
  scope :free, lambda {|free| free.nil? ? {} : where(:price => 0)}
end

and then in your controller:

@products = Product.free(params[:price])