How to do a LIKE query in Arel and Rails?

ruby-on-rails activerecord arel
filsa picture filsa · Dec 13, 2010 · Viewed 90.2k times · Source

I want to do something like:

SELECT * FROM USER WHERE NAME LIKE '%Smith%';

My attempt in Arel:

# params[:query] = 'Smith'
User.where("name like '%?%'", params[:query]).to_sql

However, this becomes:

SELECT * FROM USER WHERE NAME LIKE '%'Smith'%';

Arel wraps the query string 'Smith' correctly, but because this is a LIKE statement it doesnt work.

How does one do a LIKE query in Arel?

P.S. Bonus--I am actually trying to scan two fields on the table, both name and description, to see if there are any matches to the query. How would that work?

Answer

Pedro Rolo picture Pedro Rolo · Aug 10, 2011

This is how you perform a like query in arel:

users = User.arel_table
User.where(users[:name].matches("%#{user_name}%"))

PS:

users = User.arel_table
query_string = "%#{params[query]}%"
param_matches_string =  ->(param){ 
  users[param].matches(query_string) 
} 
User.where(param_matches_string.(:name)\
                       .or(param_matches_string.(:description)))

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