Rails search functionality - ruby-on-rails-3

Question

I am taking a rails class at my University and I am trying to create a search form which will show the results on the same page rather than show a different page of results. Is this something simple to do? I am creating a museum app with artifacts for each museum but I want the user to search artifacts from either page.
On my routes.rb I have
resources :artifacts do
collection do
get 'search'
end
end
On my museum index I have the code below that he gave us but not sure how to tweak the get routes for the same page.
<%= form_tag search_artifacts_path, :method => 'get' do %>
<p>
<%= text_field_tag :search_text, params[:search_text] %>
<%= submit_tag 'Search' %>
</p>
<% end %>
<% if #artifacts %>
<p> <%= #artifacts.length %> matching artifacts. </p>
<h2> Matching Artifacts </h2>
<% #artifacts.each do |a| %>
<%= link_to "#{a.name} (#{a.year})", a %><br />
<% end %>
<% end %>

Answer 1

Yes, this is easy. Just have the index page return the search results if params[:search_text] is present - this way you don't need a new route or a different page.
class ArtifactsController < ApplicationController
def index
#artifacts = Artifact.search(params[:search_text])
end
end
class Artifact < ActiveRecord::Base
def self.search(query)
if query
where('name ILIKE ?', "%#{query}%")
else
all
end
end
end
So then your form looks like:
<%= form_tag artifacts_path, :method => 'get' do %>
<p>
<%= text_field_tag :search_text, params[:search_text] %>
<%= submit_tag 'Search' %>
</p>
<% end %>
Edit:
So what you really want to do is any page you want to search, include a form which makes a request to that same page.
Then in each of those controller methods just put this line of code:
#artifacts = Artifact.search(params[:search_text])
and that will populate the #artifcats array with only artifacts that match the search query.

Answer 2

Try using "Ransack" gem. It can also perform some more powerful searches.