Problems Using Thinking Sphinx with Rails 3.2.1 - ruby-on-rails-3

Question

I am attempting to implement Thinking Sphinx 2.0.10 which from my understanding is compatible with Rails 3. I am very new to programming using Ruby on Rails. I have gone through quite a few articles on StackOverflow but could not find a solution to my problem.
I installed the gem without the :require parameter using in my Gemfile.
gem 'thinking-sphinx', '2.0.10'
I have a working Rails application that displays a list that I would like to add a search to.
Here is my code for defining the indexes in my model file.
define_index do
indexes :email, :sortable => true
indexes :name, :sortable => true
indexes microposts.content, :as => :micropost_content
end
Here is the Rails code in my controller file. The commented out line is the original code that is working. I have a default for will_paginate I think in the application controller for 15 records per page.
def index
#users = User.search params[:search], :per_page => 15
# #users = User.paginate(page: params[:page])
end
Here is the search box that I added to my index page.
<p>
<%= text_field_tag :search, params[:search] %>
<%= submit_tag "Search", :name => nil %>
</p>
Here is my rSpec code. This is the original code that I was using before I attempted to implement Thinking Sphinx.
describe "index" do
let(:user) { FactoryGirl.create(:user) }
before(:each) do
sign_in user
visit users_path
end
it { should have_selector('title', text: 'All users') }
describe "pagination" do
before(:all) { 15.times { FactoryGirl.create(:user) } }
after(:all) { User.delete_all }
let(:first_page) { User.paginate(page: 1) }
let(:second_page) { User.paginate(page: 2) }
it { should have_link('Next') }
it { should have_link('2') }
it { should_not have_link('delete') }
it "should list each user" do
User.all[0..2].each do |user|
page.should have_selector('li', text: user.name)
end
end
it "should list the first page of users" do
first_page.each do |user|
page.should have_selector('li', text: user.name)
end
end
it "should not list the second page of users" do
second_page.each do |user|
page.should_not have_selector('li', text: user.name)
end
end
describe "as an admin user" do
let(:admin) { FactoryGirl.create(:admin) }
before do
sign_in admin
visit users_path
end
it { should have_link('delete', href: user_path(User.first)) }
it "should be able to delete another user" do
expect { click_link('delete') }.to change(User, :count).by(-1)
end
it { should_not have_link('delete', href: user_path(admin)) }
end
end
end
When I run my rSpec test I get the following error:
Failure/Error: visit users_path
ActionView::Template::Error:
getaddrinfo: nodename nor servname provided, or not known
The page displays just fine. When I enter text in the search box and click the button nothing happens which is no surprise to me.
I am able to run Sphinx on the terminal. The searches work fine. I just do not know enough to debug this problem with Thinking Sphinx. I have searched many pages on this website and many others the past few days but none of them are dealing with this issue. Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Did you initialize the sphinx database?
Usually you just need to do something like:
rake ts:rebuild
This should automatically run rake ts:conf for you and rebuild your indexes.
You could also use rake ts:in to update the indexes.
A simple way to test if this is working is to run the rails console (rails c) and try manually searching your users (User.search).
If you get any results, the indexes are available and you can troubleshoot your views/controllers next ;)