Question

I have my rails app, which is filled with products, set up with a very basic search controller and index that basically search the db and renders the results. One of the ways a user can search is by category. So for eg, a user will enter a category, eg: 12345 and every product that matches this category will be returned.

How can I set up a link to the category in the products index, that when clicked will perform the category search and return all products which share the clicked category? For example, we have product A with category 4567. I was 4567 to be a link to the controller search action which search and returns all products that match 4567, and I need this to be done for each product (about 60k). Sorry if this isn’t clear, and please ask if there is anything that needs clarification.

Answer 1

Assuming that your SearchController is something like this:

def search
  category_id = params[category_id]
  @products = Product.where(:category_id => category_id)
end

In your product index view, you could do something like:

link_to product.category.name, search_url(:category_id => product.category_id)