Gem Ransack doesn't return any results when searched with full name

Question

I'm using Ransack with Rails 3.

My views:

  <%= search_form_for @search do |f| %>
    <%= f.text_field :first_name_or_last_name_or_company_cont, :style => 'width:150px;padding-top:6px;' %><p class="button">
    <%= f.submit "Search by name or company" %></p>
  <% end %>

My schema:

create_table "users", :force => true do |t|
    t.string   "first_name",                  
    t.string   "last_name"

on the User model I have:

  def full_name
    "#{self.first_name} #{self.last_name}"
  end

Working on the console.

If I have user with first_name = "Foo", last_name = "Bar" , when I search with either one, I get the results as expected.

When I search with full_name = "Foo Bar", I get no results.

I tried changing my text_field for Ransack to:

<%= f.text_field :first_name_or_last_name_or_company_or_full_name_cont

I get first_name_or_last_name_or_company_or_full_name_cont is undefined

is there a quick way to solve this without adding another column for full_name on my users table?

also :

     7: def index
     8:   search_params = params[:q]
 =>  9:   binding.pry

[1] pry(#<UsersController>)> search_params
=> {"first_name_or_last_name_or_company_cont"=>"Foo Bar"}

I guess I can split key value here to search the first name only.

Answer 1

You have to use a Ransacker. Add this in your User model:

ransacker :full_name do |parent|
  Arel::Nodes::InfixOperation.new('||',
    parent.table[:first_name], parent.table[:last_name])
end

You can check the Ransack GitHub wiki to more examples.

Answer 2

Add the following code to your model:

ransacker :full_name do |parent|
  Arel::Nodes::InfixOperation.new('||',
    Arel::Nodes::InfixOperation.new('||',
      parent.table[:first_name], Arel::Nodes.build_quoted(' ')
    ),
    parent.table[:last_name]
  )
end

... and the following in your view:

<%= f.label :full_name %><br>
<%= f.search_field :full_name_cont %>

The ransacker part was taken from the Ransack wiki.

Tested on Rails 4.2 with PostgreSQL.