Question

I am writing a rails 3 application, and I have a database table of Users. The users have first_name and last_name columns. On my page that lists the users, I want to have a single text search box that allows the user to filter the list. They need to be able to type into the search box one of the following:
– A first name of a user
– A last name of a user
– A full name of a user (eg. “Smith, John”)

I do not know how to write the where clause that will return these results. The closest I have gotten is below, however the concatenated fields part does not work.

where('(first_name LIKE :search) or (last_name LIKE :search) or ("#{last_name}, #{first_name}" LIKE :search)', :search => "%#{search}%")

I am also interested to know if there is a better way to handle my OR statements, as this clause is getting quite clunky.

Thanks for your help!

Answer 1

In case it helps anyone else, this is the solution I went with:

  def self.search(query)
    if query.blank?
      scoped
    else
      sql = query.split.map do |word|
       %w[first_name last_name].map do |column|
        sanitize_sql ["#{column} LIKE ?", "%#{word}%"]
       end.join(" or ")
      end.join(") and (")
      where("(#{sql})")
    end
  end

Thanks to Ryan Bates of Railscasts for this solution.