Question

I have a search form that the user can search for an Article content and narrow it down using a select box with categories. When the category param is blank, it searches for a blank id, but I’d like to return any category in that case. Is it possible to configure Thinking Sphinx to accomplish that or do I have to include this condition on my controller?

Article model:

class Article < ActiveRecord::Base
 belongs_to :category

 define_index do
  indexes :name
  indexes content
  has category(:id), :as => :category_id
 end
...
end

SearchController:

@articles = Article.search params[:q], :with => {:category_id => params[:category]}

Answer 1

For Sphinx, nils/NULLs are treated as 0’s, so if no params[:category] value is passed through to the controller, it’s best if you just don’t pass through a filter on that attribute. Something like this, perhaps:

filters = {}
filters[:category_id] = params[:category] if params[:category].present?

@articles = Article.search params[:q], :with => filters