Search box to find user in rails - ruby-on-rails

Question

I'm somewhat new to rails. I'm going through making the classic twitter clone right now. I want to have a search bar on my homepage that allows the user to search for a twitter handle, and if the handle exists, it will send the user to the show page for that twitter handle.
I've been following a RailsCast on how to implement a simple search, but instead of doing it on the index like the video, I want to do it on the show action. I've run into some problems though. The form sits on my user index view.
Here is the error:
ActionController::UrlGenerationError in Users#index
Showing c:/Sites/Projects/twitterapp/twitter/app/views/users/index.html.erb where line #2 raised:
No route matches {:action=>"show", :controller=>"users"} missing required keys: [:id]
Here is the form:
<%= form_tag(user_path, method: 'get') do %>
<%= text_field_tag(:search, params[:search]) %>
<%= submit_tag("Search", name: nil) %>
<% end %>
Here is my show action:
def show
#user = User.search(params[:search])
end
And here is my search method in my user model:
def self.search(search)
if search
find(:all, conditions:['name LIKE ?', "%#{search}%"])
else
find(:all)
end
end

Answer 1

Actually you cannot use the show method as a search result finder. Because according to the rails convention:
For any resource like users, rails scaffold generates index,new, show, create, update, delete methods based on your routes files.
Thus based on the conventional way, show method always asks for an object. Lets say you are using UserContoller show method. It asks for a user object. Which you haven't provide in the form. that's why :id missing error is given.
I would tell you to do some more learning. And for searching create a different method in a different controller and define that controller method to the routes.rb file. This is the best way to do.
If you still want to use the show method, then change the show methods routing from the routes.rb file. You've to manually declare the show action on routes file.

Answer 2

you are using user_path and path need to inform id from present user
you can do this in action :index but I recommend you to create a action to this
view
<%= form_tag(search_users_path, method: 'get') do %>
<%= text_field_tag(:search, params[:search]) %>
<%= submit_tag("Search", name: nil) %>
<% end %>
routes.rb
resources :users do
post 'search', :on => :collection
end
users_controller.rb
def search
#user = User.search(params[:search])
end
You should to create a view search.html.erb similar as index.html.erb

Answer 3

As Emu and Breno pointed what causing the problem user_path requires an user id
Solution idea:
Why not just point to users index action? like this:
<%= form_tag(users_path, method: 'get') do %>
<%= text_field_tag(:search, params[:search]) %>
<%= submit_tag("Search", name: nil) %>
<% end %>
users_controller.rb:
def index
if params[:search]
#user = User.search(params[:search])
end
end
and you can use ajax remote: true to handle the returned user object

Answer 4

Found your question via Google, but the responses and suggestions didn't work for me. Found another solution that did, so seems worth posting here.
"Search and Filter Rails Models Without Bloating Your Controller":
http://www.justinweiss.com/articles/search-and-filter-rails-models-without-bloating-your-controller/