Setting default search parameter on Ransack for rails

Question

I've been wracking my brain over this but can't get it. I feel like the answer is probably obvious.

What I'm trying to do is the following:

I have an index controller which lists a series of Jobs which I can search using Ransack. Each job has a completion date which either has a date in it or is null (unfinished). Currently, the search itself works great. I would like to make it so that the index page loads up showing only the unfinished work, but I also want it to work so that when someone does run a search, returns results for both finished and unfinished work.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. In the code below, :actual is the name of the field with the completion date. I also was looking around the web and thought that maybe something like the DEFAULT_SEARCH_PARAMETER={} that I have in the Job model might work but I couldn't seem to get it to. Here is the code:

class Job < ActiveRecord::Base
  DEFAULT_SEARCH_PARAMETER ={}
  attr_accessible :items_attributes, :actual
end

def index
   @search = Job.search(params[:q] || Job::DEFAULT_SEARCH_PARAMETER)
   @search.build_condition
   @results = @search.result
   @job = @results.paginate(:per_page => 10, :page => params[:page])
end

Answer 1

Late to the party, but thought I'd suggest an alternate approach in case someone else comes across this.

The answer above works, but its disadvantage is that the default is not added to Ransack's search object, so - if you are using a search form - the default selection is not shown in the form.

The following approach adds the default to the search object and therefore will appear in your search form.

def index
  @search = Job.search(params[:q])
  @search.status_cont = 'Open' unless params[:q] #or whatever, must use Ransack's predicates here
  @results = @search.result
  @job = @results.paginate(:per_page => 10, :page => params[:page])
end