Question

I’m using the Geocoder and Sunspot gem in my application and I have a field called :search_near_address that is suppose to give users the ability to input an address they want to search near within X amount of miles. What I am trying to map to is my Stores :address to use for the :search_near_address field. This way users can input an address ( i.e. 451 University Avenue, Palo Alto, CA ) in the :search_near_address field and it will search in a radius of 50 miles.

Answer

Sunspot 1.2.1

---

class Store < ActiveRecord::Base
   attr_accessible :address, :latitude, :longitude
   has_many :products
   geocoded_by :address
   after_validation :geocode
   reverse_geocoded_by :latitude, :longitude
   after_validation :reverse_geocode      
end

---

class Product < ActiveRecord::Base
   belongs_to :store

   searchable do # Searching with product model.
     string :search_near # For rake sunspot:reindex
     location :location
   end

   def search_near_address
 store.address if store # You may have to use the "if store".
   end

   def location
    # may need the "if store" after longitude)....
Sunspot::Util::Coordinates.new(store.latitude, store.longitude)
   end
end

---

class SearchController < ApplicationController

  def index
    @search = Product.search do |q| # Search with sunspot
      q.fulltext params[:search]
      q.with(:location).near(*Geocoder.coordinates(params[:search_near_address]), :precision => 4) if params[:search_near_address].present?
    end 
    @products = @search.results # Return results from Product.search block.
  end
end

---

# search/index/html.erb
<%= form_tag results_search_index_path, :method => 'get' do %>
    <%= text_field_tag :search, params[:search] %>
    <%= text_field_tag :search_near_address, params[:search_near_address] %>
    <%= submit_tag "Go", :name => nil %>
<% end %>

---

Answer 1

First what @m_x said is right, you can’t expect assigning the Store#near results to the @search object would work….

Just reading the docs about Geospatial in https://github.com/sunspot/sunspot, you can clearly see that you are missing a few things:

You have to declare your Geospatial field using the latitude and longitude fields that geocoder requires:

class Product < ActiveRecord::Base
   belongs_to :store

   searchable do # for Sunspot search.
     string :search_near
     latlon(:location) { 
       Sunspot::Util::Coordinates.new(category.latitude, category.longitude)
     }
   end

   def search_near
     #I changed this because business_store will not work out.
     store.address
   end
end

Then you can search (after having indexed something) like this:

class SearchController < ApplicationController

  def index
    # Search with sunspot
    @search = Sunspot.search(Product) do
      fulltext params[:search]

      # The "*" pop off the elements of the array that 
      # Geocoder.coordinates returns.
      with(:location).near(*Geocoder.coordinates(params[:search_near]), 
                           :precision => 6)

      # NOTE: You could also use the in_radius method but only in the pre-release version:
      # with(:location).in_radius(*Geocoder.coordinates(params[:search_near]), 100) if params[:search_near].present?
    end

    # Return results from Product.search block.
    @products = @search.results 
  end
end

Also read about the :precision option here http://sunspot.github.com/docs/Sunspot/DSL/RestrictionWithNear.html#near-instance_method

About Geocoder https://github.com/alexreisner/geocoder