rails 3 partial search - ruby-on-rails-3

Question

I made a search (filtering) form to filter my objects according to given values. There is a Company model and search will be according to its attributes. This is my index.html.erb:
<% provide(:title, 'All companies') %>
<h1>All companies</h1>
<%= form_tag companies_path, :method => 'get' do %>
<%= hidden_field_tag :direction, params[:direction] %>
<%= hidden_field_tag :sort, params[:sort] %>
<p>
<%= text_field_tag :search, params[:search] %>
<%= submit_tag "Search", :name => nil %>
</p>
<% end %>
<table class="pretty" border="1" cellpadding="10">
<tr>
<th><%= sortable "name" %></th>
<th><%= sortable "city" %></th>
<th><%= sortable "country" %></th>
<th><%= sortable "street_address" %></th>
<th><%= sortable "sector" %></th>
<th><%= sortable "telephone" %></th>
<th><%= sortable "fax" %></th>
<th>DELETE</th>
</tr>
<% for company in #companies %>
<tr class="<%= cycle('oddrow', 'evenrow') -%>">
<td><%= link_to company.name, company %></td>
<td><%= company.city %></td>
<td><%= company.country %></td>
<td><%= company.street_address %></td>
<td><%= company.sector %></td>
<td><%= company.telephone %></td>
<td><%= company.fax %></td>
<td><% if current_user.admin? %>
|| <%= link_to "delete", company, method: :delete,
data: { confirm: "You sure?" } %>
<% end %></td>
</tr>
<% end %>
</table>
<%= will_paginate #companies %>
This is my companies_controller.rb
helper_method :sort_column, :sort_direction
def index
#companies = Company.search(params[:search]).order(sort_column + ' ' + sort_direction).paginate(:per_page => 10, :page => params[:page])
end
This is my model company.rb
class Company < ActiveRecord::Base
attr_accessible :city, :country, :fax, :name, :reseller, :sector, :street_address, :telephone, :id
has_many :users , dependent: :destroy
def name_for_form
"#{name}"
end
def self.search(search)
if search
q = "%#{search}"
where('name LIKE ? OR city LIKE ? OR country LIKE ? OR street_address LIKE ? OR telephone LIKE ? OR fax LIKE ? OR sector LIKE ?',
q,q,q,q,q,q,q)
else
scoped
end
end
validates :city, presence: true
validates :country, presence: true
validates :fax, presence: true
validates :name, presence: true
validates :sector, presence: true
validates :street_address, presence: true
validates :telephone, presence: true
end
Lets assume I have 3 companies named kalahari, kalahari 2, and kalahari2. When I search kalahari, it founds only 1 company, kalahari. I mean it can't find kalahari in kalahari 2, or kalahari2. Only founds exact matches. When I search kala, it founds nothing. How can I fix that most simply? I am new to rails and don't want to mess a lot of things.

Answer 1

The simplest change that will get what you want is adding a wildcard to the end of your search query:
q = "%#{search}%"
The % matches anything when used with LIKE, so your code as currently written will match anything that ends with your input (so it would match a query of 'foo' to 'afoo', 'b_foo', and '1 3 5 x foo'), but without a matching wildcard on the end, it will not match things that contain the query but don't end with it (so 'foo' will not match 'foobar' or 'afoox').