Rails DRY up similar controller actions - ruby-on-rails

Question

I have two separate controllers that inherit from Admin::UserBaseController, display a searchable, sortable table of users, and use the same partial views.
Admin::UsersController - Display users within the context of a given organization.
Admin::OrganizationsController - Displays all users for the system.
Here is the index method of Admin::UsersController:
def index
q = "%#{params[:search]}%"
#users = User.where("first_name like ? or last_name like ? or username like ?", q, q, q).order(sort_column + ' ' + sort_direction).paginate(:page => params[:page])
respond_to do |format|
format.html # index.html.erb
format.json { render :json => #users }
end
end
Here is the edit method of Admin::OrganizationsController:
def edit
#organization = Organization.find(params[:id])
q = "%#{params[:search]}%"
#users = #organization.users.where("first_name like ? or last_name like ? or username like ?", q, q, q).order(sort_column + ' ' + sort_direction).paginate(:page => params[:page])
end
There is a lot of similarity between the two methods in the way that the #users variable is assigned. It's a difference of User and #organization.users and that's it. How do I DRY this up?

Answer 1

So what this screams is scopes. This removes the duplicate queries into a single place in the model and enables you to chain scopes onto the class and associations.
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
scope :search_identity, lambda { |identity| where("first_name like ? or last_name like ? or username like ?", identity, identity, identity) }
scope :user_order, lambda { |column,direction| order("#{column} #{direction}") }
end
Then in Admin::UsersController
q = "%#{params[:search]}%"
#users = User.search_identity( q ).user_order( sort_column, sort_direction).paginate(:page => params[:page])
In Admin::OrganizationsController:
q = "%#{params[:search]}%"
#users = #organization.users.search_identity( q ).user_order( sort_column, sort_direction).paginate(:page => params[:page])
Making everything nice and succinct.

Answer 2

Move
where("first_name like ? or last_name like ? or username like ?", q, q, q).order(sort_column + ' ' + sort_direction).paginate(:page => params[:page])
to a method in User
such as:
def self.method_name(q,params)
where("first_name like ? or last_name like ? or username like ?", q, q, q).order(sort_column + ' ' + sort_direction).paginate(:page => params[:page])
end
then just use that method in place of the where