Rails Plugin: Acts_As_Indexed

Version 0.4.4 released 04 February 2008 – Fixed some minor AR bugs

This plugin allows ranked boolean-queried fulltext search to be added to any Rails app with no dependencies and minimal setup.

Install

If you don’t have git installed, you can download the plugin from the GitHub page and unpack it into the vendor/plugins directory of your rails app.

Setup

Add acts_as_indexed to the top of any models you want to index, along with a list of the fields you wish to be indexed.

class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
  acts_as_indexed :fields => [:title, :body]

   ...
end

Searching

To search, call the find_with_index method on your model to search using the index. The optional ids_only parameter, when set to true, will return only the IDs of any matching records.

    # Returns array of Post objects.
	my_search_results = Post.find_with_index('my search query') # =>  [#<Post:0x314b09c @attributes={"...
	
	# Pass any of the ActiveRecord find options to the search.
	my_search_results = Post.find_with_index('my search query',{:limit => 10}) # return the first 10 matches.
	
	# Returns array of IDs.
	my_search_results = Post.find_with_index('my search query',{},{:ids_only => true}) # =>  [12,19,33...

h4. Boolean Query Options

The following query operators are supported:

• AND – This is the default option. ‘cat dog’ will find records matching ‘cat’ AND ‘dog’.
• NOT – ‘cat -dog’ will find records matching ‘cat’ AND NOT ‘dog’
• INCLUDE – “cat +me” will find records matching “cat” and “me”, even if “me” is smaller than the min_word_size.
• ”” – Quoted terms are matched as phrases. ‘“cat dog”’ will find records matching the whole phrase. Quoted terms can be preceded by the NOT operator. ‘cat -“big dog”’ etc.

Pagination

Pagination is supported via the paginate_search method whose first argument is the search query, followed all the standard will_paginate arguments.

@images = Image.paginate_search 'girl', :page => 1, :per_page => 5

Other Stuff

Full Documentation

You can either build the rdoc by running rake rdoc in the acts_as_indexed directory, or look at the latest version online.

Problems, Comments, Suggestions?

All of the above are most welcome. dougal.s@gmail.com

Credits

Douglas F Shearer

Donate

If you find this plugin useful, please consider a donation to show your support!