From: Grant GBrown <ggbrown@...>
Date: 2005-12-20T07:22:48+09:00
Subject: Help on Simple Search

Hey there,

I realize this is simple but I am unable to find a working example 
anywhere. I just need an example of how to submit a search value from a 
form, and have a query run on that value using Rails. For example:

BASIC form...one field. Enter in a last name (e.g. 'Smith') and have a 
query run against a table and return rows where a field (LastName) is 
'Smith'.

Where I am hung up is the actual passing of the form value (let's say 
the field name is 'lastname') to my controller 
(student_search_controller.rb) to the method which will execute the 
query.

In my form, I have:

<%= start_form_tag :action => 'searchresults' %>
<p><label for="Lastname">Last Name</label><br/>
<%= text_field 'student', 'searchfield'  %></p>
  <%= submit_tag "Search" %>
<%= end_form_tag %>

In my Controller I have:

def searchresults

    lastname = params[:lastname]
    @students = Student.find(:all,
                            :conditions => ["LastName = :lastname", params])
  end

However, I get the following error:

 ActiveRecord::PreparedStatementInvalid in Student_search#searchresults

wrong number of bind variables (4 for 1) in: LastName = :lastname

Can anyone provide a simple example? I can execute the query by 
hard-coding it in my searchresults method, but obviously...that's not 
really what I need here.

Thanks!
Grant