FortyFacets
FortyFacets lets you easily build explorative search interfaces based on fields of your ActiveRecord models.
See it implemented in a example rails application or
try a working demo! (Heroku isn't offering free tires anymore 😢)
It offers a simple API to create an interactive UI to browse your data by iteratively adding filter values.
The search is purely done via SQL queries, which are automatically generated via the AR-mappings.
Narrowing down the search result is done purely via GET
requests. This way all steps are bookmarkable. This way the search natively works together with turbolinks as well.
There is no JavaScript involved. The collection returned is a normal ActiveRecord collection - this way it works seamlessly together with other GEMs like will_paginate
Installation
Add this line to your application's Gemfile:
gem 'forty_facets'
And then execute:
$ bundle
Or install it yourself as:
$ gem install forty_facets
Usage
You can clone a working example at https://github.com/fortytools/forty_facets_demo
If you have Movies with a textual title, categotized by genre, studio and year with studios belonging to a country...
class Movie < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :year
belongs_to :studio
has_and_belongs_to_many :genres
scope :classics, -> { where("year <= ?", 1980) }
end
You can then declare the structure of your search like so:
class HomeController < ApplicationController
class MovieSearch < FortyFacets::FacetSearch
model 'Movie' # which model to search for
text :title # filter by a generic string entered by the user
scope :classics # only return movies which are in the scope 'classics'
range :price, name: 'Price' # filter by ranges for decimal fields
facet :year, name: 'Releaseyear', order: :year # additionally order values in the year field
facet :studio, name: 'Studio', order: :name
facet :genres, name: 'Genre' # generate a filter with all values of 'genre' occuring in the result
facet [:studio, :country], name: 'Country' # generate a filter several belongs_to 'hops' away
orders 'Title' => :title,
'price, cheap first' => "price asc",
'price, expensive first' => {price: :desc, title: :desc}
custom :for_manual_handling
end
def index
@search = MovieSearch.new(params) # this initializes your search object from the request params
@movies = @search.result.paginate(page: params[:page], per_page: 5) # optionally paginate through your results
end
In your view you can iterate the result like any other ActiveRecord collection
%table.table.table-condensed
%tbody
- @movies.each do |movie|
%tr
%td
%strong=movie.title
Use the search object to display further narrowing options to the user
- filter = @search.filter(:genre)
.col-md-4
.filter
.filter-title= filter.name
.filter-values
%ul.selected
- filter.selected.each do |genre|
%li= link_to genre.name, filter.remove(genre).path
%ul.selectable
- filter.facet.reject(&:selected).each do |facet_value|
- genre = facet_value.entity
%li
= link_to genre.name, filter.add(genre).path
%span.count= "(#{facet_value.count})"
API
Base class
To create a custom search subclass FortyFacets::FacetSearch
.
class MySearch
model 'MyActiveRecordModel' # replace this with an class name from your models folder
end
Available declaration methods
keyword | options | |
---|---|---|
text | prefix:true | creates a filter to limit search result to entities containing the filter value in the given field |
scope | creates a filter to limit search result to entities matching the scope with the given name | |
facet | creates a facetted filter on the specified model attribute (attribute or belongs_to) | |
range | creates a range filter (param format 'FROM - TO') limiting result to entities with values in that range | |
orders | takes a hash mapping a label to an argument that the active record order method can be called with to sort the result |
|
custom | doesnt affect the query directly, just handles the request param. access via @search.filter(:custom_filter).set(..) /@search.filter(:custom_filter).value |
FAQ
What kind of associations can be searched/filtered for?
At the moment you can facet for entities mapped via a standard belongs_to
or has_and_belongs_to
association.
Contributing
- Fork it ( http://github.com/fortytools/forty_facets/fork )
- Create your feature branch (
git checkout -b my-new-feature
) - Commit your changes (
git commit -am 'Add some feature'
) - Push to the branch (
git push origin my-new-feature
) - Create new Pull Request