Ruby on Rails search with multiple parameters - ruby-on-rails

Question

For example in my Car model i have such fields:
color, price, year
and in form partial i generate form with all this fields. But how to code such logic:
user could enter color and year and i must find with this conditions, user could enter just year or all fields in same time...
And how to write where condition? I could write something like:
if params[:color].present?
car = Car.where(color: params[:color])
end
if params[:color].present? && params[:year].present?
car = Car.where(color: params[:color], year: params[:year])
end
and so over....
But this is very ugly solution, i'm new to rails, and want to know: how is better to solve my problem?

Answer 1

Check out the has_scope gem: https://github.com/plataformatec/has_scope
It really simplifies a lot of this:
class Graduation < ActiveRecord::Base
scope :featured, -> { where(:featured => true) }
scope :by_degree, -> degree { where(:degree => degree) }
scope :by_period, -> started_at, ended_at { where("started_at = ? AND ended_at = ?", started_at, ended_at) }
end
class GraduationsController < ApplicationController
has_scope :featured, :type => :boolean
has_scope :by_degree
has_scope :by_period, :using => [:started_at, :ended_at], :type => :hash
def index
#graduations = apply_scopes(Graduation).all
end
end
Thats it from the controller side

Answer 2

I would turn those into scopes on your Car model:
scope :by_color, lambda { |color| where(:color => color)}
scope :by_year, lambda { |year| where(:year => year)}
and in your controller you would just conditionally chain them like this:
def index
#cars = Car.all
#cars = #cars.by_color(params[:color]) if params[:color].present?
#cars = #cars.by_year(params[:year]) if params[:year].present?
end

Answer 3

user_params = [:color, :year, :price]
cars = self
user_params.each do |p|
cars = cars.where(p: params[p]) if params[p].present?
end

Answer 4

The typical (naive, but simple) way I would do this is with a generic search method in my model, eg.
class Car < ActiveRecord::Base
# Just pass params directly in
def self.search(params)
# By default we return all cars
cars = all
if params[:color].present?
cars = cars.where(color: params[:color])
end
if params[:price1].present? && params[:price2].present?
cars = cars.where('price between ? and ?', params[:price1], params[:price2])
end
# insert more fields here
cars
end
end
You can easily keep chaining wheres onto the query like this, and Rails will just AND them all together in the SQL. Then you can just call it with Car.search(params).

Answer 5

I think you could use params.permit
my_where_params = params.permit(:color, :price, :year).select {|k,v| v.present?}
car = Car.where(my_where_params)
EDIT: I think this only works in rails 4, not sure what version you're using.
EDIT #2 excerpt from site I linked to:
Using permit won't mind if the permitted attribute is missing
params = ActionController::Parameters.new(username: "john", password: "secret")
params.permit(:username, :password, :foobar)
# => { "username"=>"john", "password"=>"secret"}
as you can see, foobar isn't inside the new hash.
EDIT #3 added select block to where_params as it was pointed out in the comments that empty form fields would trigger an empty element to be created in the params hash.