Question

I’m building my first Ruby on Rails application, and I want to do it the “Rails” way, making my application as RESTful as possible.

The application revolves around a search function, in which a user fills out a form defining what they are looking for, submits it, then pages through their results, viewing items they are interested in. From my understanding of REST, it sounds like I should be encoding my parameters into the URL for my results page(?)

If my base route is:

match "search" => "search#index"

And the base route for my search results are:

match "search/results" => "search#results"

What would be the best way of implementing routes/URLs/parameters for my search? The solution must:

• Support many parameters (30+), of which, any could be optional.
• Support pagination: there could be alot of results.
• Adhere to the “Rails way”!

Any suggestions/tips from you Rails pros would be very helpful, thanks!

Answer 1

For pagination: you can use a gem like will_paginate or kaminari

Concerning search parameters: Rails will put anything in the request’s query string into a params variable accessible within your controllers and views.

What you’re trying to do (naming the urls search & search/results) doesn’t really align with “restful routes”. Still, this is what you’ve asked for.

scope :search do 
  get 'search' => 'search#index' 
  get 'search/results' => 'search#show' 
end

will produce

  search GET            /search(.:format)                search#index
  search_results GET    /search/results(.:format)        search#show

To remain restful, try discerning what you’re searching for… for products, the results would be displayed using Products#index.

If you want to keep the search broad, I’d suggest Search#new and Results#index. These latter options seem more RESTful.