Ruby on Rails - How to combine display Search results in the View - ruby-on-rails

Question

I have Search controller that searches 2 models - Posts and Categories. The search works, however I am unable to display results in the View correctly - I can't get category names to show up.
I am very confused and frustrated at this point and hope to find some help!
I'm pretty sure (99% sure) the problem is in the View somewhere, because I can get results to display through render inspect thingy.
SearchController.rb
class SearchController < ApplicationController
def index
#posts = Post.search(params[:search])
#categories = Category.search(params[:search])
# combine the results
#results = #posts + #categories
#results.uniq # may be necessary to remove duplicates
end
end
index.html.erb (views/search)
<%= render 'posts/posts', :posts => #posts %>
_posts.html.erb (view/posts)
<h1>Listing posts</h1>
<table>
<tr>
<th>Name</th>
<th>Category</th>
<th>Description</th>
<th>Flag</th>
</tr>
<% if posts %>
<% posts.each do |post| %>
<tr>
<td><%= post.name %></td>
<td><%= post.category.name %></td>
<td><%= post.description %></td>
<td><%= post.flag %></td>
</tr>
<% end %>
<% else %>
<tr><td>No posts</td></tr>
<% end %>
</table>
I can get posts that match the search to display, but I can't display categories. How can I do this? Any help highly appreciated!! Thank you.

Answer 1

If you are using a search backend like sunspot solr then you would be able to combine the searches like
#search = Sunspot.search [User, Company] do
fulltext params[:search]
end
#results = #search.results
And then return the necessary values. In this example, it's showing where you can retrieve the class of the action (controller_name) may not work depending on which controller the results are returned in.
<% #results.each do |result| %>
<% case result.class.to_s %>
<% when "Company" %>
<li><%= "Company: #{result.name}" %></li>
<% when "User" %>
<li><%= "User: #{result.username}" %></li>
<% end %>
<% end %>

Answer 2

The answer (I include all the things I changed to make it work + few files that I didn't change but that have to be there), or How to make simple search for multiple models:
SearchController.rb
class SearchController < ApplicationController
def index
#posts = Post.search(params[:search])
end
end
post.rb
class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
attr_accessible :category_id :name :description :flag
belongs_to :category
def self.search(search)
if search
find(:all, :joins => :category, :conditions => ['posts.equipment LIKE ? OR posts.description LIKE ? or categories.name like ?', "%#{search}%", "%#{search}%", "%#{search}%"])
else
find(:all)
end
end
search/index.html.erb
<%= render 'posts/posts', :posts => #posts %>
I added 2 files _post.html.erb and _category.html.erb. They are similar, this is _post.html.erb:
post: <%= post.name %>
(This might not be necessary in some cases or for some models. I can search a third model without this file in its' views. However the third model doesn't have file like _posts.html.erb either).
Finally, _posts.html.erb remains the same:
...
<% if posts %>
<% posts.each do |post| %>
<tr>
<td><%= post.name %></td>
<td><%= post.category.name %></td>
<td><%= post.description %></td>
<td><%= post.flag %></td>
</tr>
<% end %>
<% else %>
<tr><td>No posts</td></tr>
<% end %>
...
This works now. Can add new models to the search easily. The only other thing needed for the search is input field.