Installation

Ransack is supported for Rails 8.1 on Ruby 3.3 and later.

Add it to your Gemfile and run bundle install:

gem 'ransack'

There is nothing to generate. Every Active Record model gets a ransack class method, and every view gets the search_form_for and sort_link helpers. Optional settings go in an initializer; see Configuration.

Bleeding edge

To use changes that are not yet released to RubyGems, use the main branch:

gem 'ransack', github: 'activerecord-hackery/ransack', branch: 'main'

Databases

Ransack generates SQL through Arel, so it works with any database Active Record can talk to. Three are tested on every change and get first-class treatment for the handful of places where the SQL differs:

Database Adapters Tested in CI
PostgreSQL postgresql, and any adapter built on it such as postgis yes
MySQL / MariaDB mysql2, trilogy yes
SQLite sqlite3 yes

An adapter that subclasses one of Rails’ own is recognised as that database without any configuration. Other adapters (sqlserver, oracle_enhanced) are treated as standard SQL; they are known to work but are not tested here, and the dialect option lets you name a dialect explicitly if one of the known ones is a better fit.

Demo application

The Ransack Demo application shows how to build simple and advanced search forms in a Rails application.

Next steps

  1. Simple mode: a search form and sortable columns.
  2. Authorization: nothing is searchable until a model says so.
  3. Using predicates: eq, cont, in, null and the rest.