SmartFilter

Rails gem to extend ActiveRecord with a smart_filter method.

Installation

As a gem (using Bundler)

gem “smart_filter”, “~> 0.1.1” # hosted on rubygems.com

As a plugin

script/plugin install git://github.com/vvohra87/smart_filter.git

Why smart_filter?

In most applications, I need the following types of search / filter options:

1. %LIKE% matches for any text or string field such as “name”, “description”, “email”, “address”, etc

2. Exact matches for any integer, date or datetime field such as “quantity”, “id”, “created_at”, “start”, “age”, etc

3. Range matches for any integer, decimal, float, date or datetime such as “price”, “age”, “created_at”, etc

SmartFilter simply provides a simple way to do just that.

This is not meant to replace gems like meta-where / arel-table based query builders / search engines, just make life easier by having to write less code! (and apparently more documentation!)

How it works

Once you have included the gem in your app, you now have a smart_filter method for all your models.

The method takes in a hash whose keys are dependent on the model definition.

For numeric and datetime based columns it will accept 3 different inputs:

1. column => value # will return exact match for value

2. column_min => value # will return all records where attribute has value greater than or equal to specified value

3. column_max => value # will return all records where attribute has value less than or equal to specified value

For string and text based columns it will accept only the column name.

Example

Let’s say that you have a Product model with the following attributes:

title: string
description: text
price: float
current_stock: integer
created_at: datetime

So, on this the full set of options you would have is:

Product.smart_filter(
    :title => "abc"	# where the title contains 'abc'
	:description => "cba" # where the description contains 'cba'
	:price => 5.0	# where the price is exactly 5.0
	:price_min => 10.0	# where the price is greater than or equal to 10.0
	:price_max => 20.0	# where the price is less than or equal to 20.0
	:current_stock => 55	# where the current stock is exactly 55
	:current_stock_min => 20	# .....etc.....
	:current_stock_max => 100	# .....etc.....
	:created_at => Time.now		
	:created_at_min => Time.now - 1.week
	:created_at_max => Time.now - 2.days
)