Ferret talk - Oct 2007 - Can you alias fields in acts_as_ferret?

Is there any way to set a field name that is different than the method
name used to populate it?

My example:

In Rails, I''m using acts_as_ferret on a Article model that has_many
Authors. I want to be able to index authors'' names with each article.
Since @article.authors yields an array of Author objects (and not an
indexable string), I''ve created this method in my Article model:

def authors_aaf
  @authors.collect {|a| a.name }.to_sentence
end

I call it "authors_aaf" because "authors" would cause a
conflict. But I
want my field name to be "authors", because that makes the most sense.
(Users shouldn''t have to type "authors_aaf:Joe" to search by
author.)

Any idea how this can/should be done?
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On Mon, Oct 08, 2007 at 04:30:12AM +0200, Chase DuBois
wrote:
> Is there any way to set a field name that is different than the method
> name used to populate it?
> 
> My example:
> 
> In Rails, I''m using acts_as_ferret on a Article model that
has_many
> Authors. I want to be able to index authors'' names with each
article.
> Since @article.authors yields an array of Author objects (and not an
> indexable string), I''ve created this method in my Article model:
> 
> def authors_aaf
>   @authors.collect {|a| a.name }.to_sentence
> end
> 
> I call it "authors_aaf" because "authors" would cause a
conflict. But I
> want my field name to be "authors", because that makes the most
sense.
> (Users shouldn''t have to type "authors_aaf:Joe" to
search by author.)
> 
> Any idea how this can/should be done?
You could pass the query through a de-aliasing helper method - something
that does query.gsub!(/authors:/, ''authors_aaf:'') - before
handing off the
query string to ferret.

-Chris