A recurring question I have been seeing regarding MetaSearch has been the need to modify or access the relation generated by the search. That’s precisely why MetaSearch::Builder#relation exists, so I thought I’d make a quick post detailing its usage.

While MetaSearch::Builder is doing its thing, handling your search params, it’s building up an ActiveRecord::Relation that will eventually be used for your results. So, in your controller, you might have:

    @search = Article.search(params[:search])
    @articles = @search.all

You can instead be sure to lazy load those articles in your view by instead doing:

    @search = Article.search(params[:search])
    @articles = @search.relation

You can also do some fun little tricks with scopes, if you’re so inclined:

    # article.rb
    class Article < ActiveRecord::Base
      scope :with_titles_containing_hi, search(:title_contains => 'hi').relation
      scope :with_titles_containing_there, search(:title_contains => 'there').relation
    end
    
    ruby-1.9.2-p0 > Article.with_titles_containing_hi.
                    with_titles_containing_there.to_sql
    => "SELECT     \"articles\".* FROM       \"articles\"
        WHERE     (\"articles\".\"title\" LIKE '%hi%')
        AND (\"articles\".\"title\" LIKE '%there%')" 

I tend to prefer using MetaWhere for things like that but it’s a neat trick, all the same.

So, there you have it: MetaSearch::Builder#relation. Use it wisely.