Rails gem rails3-jquery-autocomplete: How do I query multiple fields

Question

I\'m using the rails3-jquery-autocomplete gem found here: http://github.com/crowdint/rails3-jquery-autocomplete

The instructions are clear for how to qu

Answer 1

An alternative to the previous suggestions is to define a SQL view on the table holding first_name and last_name. Your SQL code (in SQLite) might look like:

CREATE VIEW Contacts AS
SELECT user.id, ( user.first_name || ' ' || users.last_name ) AS fullname
FROM persons;

Then define a model for the table:

class Contact < ActiveRecord::Base
    set_table_name "contacts"
end

You can now use rails3-jquery-autocomplete 'out-of-the box'. So in your controller you would write:

autocomplete :contact, :fullname

In your view file you can simply write:

f.autocomplete_field :contact, autocomplete_contact_fullname_path

I will leave configuration of the route as an exercise for the reader :-).