FortyFacets

FortyFacets lets you easily build explorative search interfaces based on fields of your ActiveRecord models.

See it implemented in a example rails application or try a working demo!

It offers a simple API to create an interactive UI to browse your data by iteratively adding filter values.

The search is purely done via SQL queries, which are automatically generated via the AR-mappings.

Narrowing down the search result is done purely via GET requests. This way all steps are bookmarkable. This way the search natively works together with turbolinks as well.

There is no JavaScript involved. The collection returned is a normal ActiveRecord collection - this way it works seamlessly together with other GEMs like will_paginate

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'forty_facets'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install forty_facets

Usage

You can clone a working example at https://github.com/fortytools/forty_facets_demo

If you have Movies with a textual title, categotized by genre, studio and year with studios belonging to a country...

class Movie < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :year
  belongs_to :studio
  has_and_belongs_to_many :genres

  scope :classics, -> { where("year <= ?", 1980) }
end

You can then declare the structure of your search like so:

class HomeController < ApplicationController

  class MovieSearch < FortyFacets::FacetSearch
    model 'Movie' # which model to search for
    text :title   # filter by a generic string entered by the user
    scope :classics   # only return movies which are in the scope 'classics'
    range :price, name: 'Price' # filter by ranges for decimal fields
    facet :year, name: 'Releaseyear', order: :year # additionally order values in the year field
    facet :studio, name: 'Studio', order: :name
    facet :genres, name: 'Genre' # generate a filter with all values of 'genre' occuring in the result
    facet [:studio, :country], name: 'Country' # generate a filter several belongs_to 'hops' away

    orders 'Title' => :title,           'price, cheap first' => "price asc",           'price, expensive first' => {price: :desc, title: :desc}
    custom :for_manual_handling

  end

  def index
    @search = MovieSearch.new(params) # this initializes your search object from the request params
    @movies = @search.result.paginate(page: params[:page], per_page: 5) # optionally paginate through your results
  end

In your view you can iterate the result like any other ActiveRecord collection

%table.table.table-condensed
  %tbody
    - @movies.each do |movie|
      %tr
        %td
          %strong=movie.title

Use the search object to display further narrowing options to the user

- filter = @search.filter(:genre).col-md-4
  .filter
    .filter-title= filter.name
    .filter-values
      %ul.selected
        - filter.selected.each do |genre|
          %li= link_to genre.name, filter.remove(genre).path
      %ul.selectable
        - filter.facet.reject(&:selected).each do |facet_value|
          - genre = facet_value.entity
          %li
            = link_to genre.name, filter.add(genre).path
            %span.count= "(#{facet_value.count})"

API

Base class

To create a custom search subclass FortyFacets::FacetSearch.

class MySearch
  model 'MyActiveRecordModel' # replace this with an class name from your models folderend

Available declaration methods

keyword	options
text	prefix:true	creates a filter to limit search result to entities containing the filter value in the given field
scope		creates a filter to limit search result to entities matching the scope with the given name
facet		creates a facetted filter on the specified model attribute (attribute or belongs_to)
range		creates a range filter (param format 'FROM - TO') limiting result to entities with values in that range
orders		takes a hash mapping a label to an argument that the active record `order` method can be called with to sort the result
custom		doesnt affect the query directly, just handles the request param. access via @search.filter(:custom_filter).set(..) /@search.filter(:custom_filter).value