Pollyanna - very simple search for your ActiveRecord models¶ ↑

Pollyanna adds a very simple full text search to your ActiveRecord models. Before saving, searchable models copy strings relevant to the search into a text column. Pollyanna finds results for a query using LIKE patterns in SQL.

We found Pollyanna very useful for search-as-you-type boxes.

If you are looking for a more sophisticated solution, check out Dusen.

class Movie < ActiveRecord::Base
  include Pollyanna::Searchable

  def search_text
    "#{title} #{year} #{director}"
  end

end

class MoviesController

  def index
    @movies = Movie.search(params[:query])
  end

end

1. Add a text column “search_text” to a model

2. Have the model include Pollyanna::Searchable

3. Overwrite search_text to define which text is indexed upon saving

4. Model.search("query goes here") now gives you a scope for the results of your query. Blank queries return everything.

If you want to search a column other than search_text, you may say Movie.search(query, :by => "other_column").

• Pollyanna matches partial words, so “oo” matches “foo”.

• Multiple words in a query are AND-ed automatically.

Pollyanna is a gem, which you can install with

sudo gem install pollyanna

In Rails 2, add the following to your environment.rb:

config.gem 'pollyanna'

In Rails 3, add the following to your Gemfile:

gem 'pollyanna'

We cannot guarantee Rails 3 compatibility at this point, but we will upgrade the gem when Rails 3 is released.

Henning Koch

makandra.com

gem-session.com