Rails - Apr 2009 - how to search all fields for a string in SQL ?

Using SQL or activerecord I am not sure how to search all fields for a
specific value ?
I know how to do this by just writing ruby code. To do it in SQL or an
activerecord find w/condition,
I don''t know how. I actually am supposed to combine an find w/
condition and a search all fields for a
value and AND those together. I think perhaps it can''t be done with a
single find ?

wbsurfver-/E1597aS9LQAvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org wrote:
> Using SQL or activerecord I am not sure how to search all fields for a
> specific value ?
> I know how to do this by just writing ruby code. To do it in SQL or an
> activerecord find w/condition,
> I don''t know how. I actually am supposed to combine an find w/
> condition and a search all fields for a
> value and AND those together. I think perhaps it can''t be done
with a
> single find ?
What you''re probably looking for is a full-text search engine.
Here''s an
article I found using the Sphinx engine:

http://www.neeraj.name/blog/articles/599-working-with-sphinx-fulltext-search-engine-using-ultrasphinx

If you needs are pretty basic and you don''t mind a database specific 
implementation you can also look at MySQL''s full-text search 
capabilities. SQL was just not designed for such queries.
-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

I would suggest going with the thinkingsphinx plugin instead of
ultrasphinx. Thinkingsphinx''s syntax is much cleaner.

http://ts.freelancing-gods.com/usage.html
http://railscasts.com/episodes/120-thinking-sphinx

On the other hand, if your dataset is small enough, you could try
scoped-search, which helps you construct the SQL to perform your
searches: http://wiki.github.com/wvanbergen/scoped_search
But as Robert said, databases/SQL are not great for this type of
queries and you may not be able to scale much when you have many
conditions and/or big volumes of data.


On Apr 30, 4:54 pm, Robert Walker
<rails-mailing-l...-ARtvInVfO7ksV2N9l4h3zg@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
> wbsurf...-/E1597aS9LQAvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org wrote:
> > Using SQL or activerecord I am not sure how to search all fields for a
> > specific value ?
> > I know how to do this by just writing ruby code. To do it in SQL or an
> > activerecord find w/condition,
> > I don''t know how. I actually am supposed to combine an find
w/
> > condition and a search all fields for a
> > value and AND those together. I think perhaps it can''t be
done with a
> > single find ?
>
> What you''re probably looking for is a full-text search engine.
Here''s an
> article I found using the Sphinx engine:
>
> http://www.neeraj.name/blog/articles/599-working-with-sphinx-fulltext...
>
> If you needs are pretty basic and you don''t mind a database
specific
> implementation you can also look at MySQL''s full-text search
> capabilities. SQL was just not designed for such queries.
> --
> Posted viahttp://www.ruby-forum.com/.