Polysearch

Simplified polymorphic full text + similarity search based on postgres.

NOTE: This project is narrower in scope and more opinionated than pg_search.

• Postgresql >= 11
• Rails >= 6.0

1. Add the gem to your project

   bundle add polysearch

2. Run the generator

   bundle exec rails g polysearch:migration

   You can also specify a datatype that your app uses for primary keys (default is bigint). For example, if your application uses uuid primary keys, you install the migration like this.

   bundle exec rails g polysearch:migration uuid

3. Migrate the database

   bundle exec rails db:migrate

4. Update the model(s) you'd like to search

   class User < ApplicationRecord
     include Polysearch::Searchable
   
     after_save_commit :update_polysearch
   
     def to_tsvectors
       [
         make_tsvector(first_name, weight: "A"),
         make_tsvector(last_name, weight: "A"),
         make_tsvector(nickname, weight: "B")
       ]
     end
   end

   If you have existing records that need to create/update a polysearch record, you can save them like this.

   User.find_each(&:update_polysearch)

5. Start searching

   User.create first_name: "Shawn", last_name: "Spencer", nickname: "Maverick"
   
   # find natural language matches (faster)
   User.full_text_search("shawn")
   
   # find similarity matches, best for misspelled search terms (slower)
   User.similarity_search("shwn")
   
   # perform both a full text search and similarity search
   User.combined_search("shwn")
   
   # perform a full text search and fall back to similarity search (faster than combined_search)
   User.polysearch("shwn")
   
   # calculate counts (explicitly pass :id to omit search rankings)
   User.full_text_search("shawn").count(:id)
   User.similarity_search("shwn").count(:id)
   User.combined_search("shwn").count(:id)
   User.polysearch("shwn").count(:id)

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.