Ransack Search for Active Record

Search forms and sortable columns for your Rails app, in plain Ruby and ERB. No search server, no extra infrastructure.

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Upgrading to 6.x

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Simple mode

One search_form_for and a sort_link give any model a search form and sortable columns.

Predicates

Name the comparison in the parameter, title_cont, price_gteq, deleted_at_null, and Ransack writes the SQL.

Associations

Search and sort through associations by name, author_name_cont, with the joins built for you.

Advanced mode

Nested groups of conditions, combined with AND and OR, for searches a flat form cannot express.

Safe by default

Nothing is searchable until a model allowlists it, or a controller permits it with strong parameters.

Ransackers

Define your own searchable attributes in Arel, for dates, concatenations, JSON and anything SQL can compute.

A search in three steps

Allow the attributes a search may use:

class Post < ApplicationRecord
  def self.ransackable_attributes(auth_object = nil)
    %w[title published_at]
  end
end

Build the search from the request:

class PostsController < ApplicationController
  def index
    @q = Post.ransack(params[:q])
    @posts = @q.result
  end
end

Render a form and a sortable column:

<%= search_form_for @q do |f| %>
  <%= f.label :title_cont %>
  <%= f.search_field :title_cont %>
  <%= f.submit %>
<% end %>

<%= sort_link(@q, :published_at) %>

GET /posts?q[title_cont]=ransack&q[s]=published_at+desc then runs:

SELECT "posts".* FROM "posts"
WHERE "posts"."title" LIKE '%ransack%' ESCAPE '\'
ORDER BY "posts"."published_at" DESC

Ransack supports Rails 8.1 and 8.0 on Ruby 3.3 and later, on PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB and SQLite. See Installation to add it to your app.