How to use sort_by or order_by on view and controller with will_paginate?

Question

In my rails application I am limiting the amount of rooms displayed on a page through pagination, I want to allow the user to order/sort the results to different columns of the room model. I think I will need a drop down menu to do this, and then pass this data over to my rooms_controller maybe through an instance variable.

How can I sort the rooms with the select tag according to a column and what do I need to do in the corresponding controller to make this work?

At the moment I am using this for a drop down menu:

index.html.erb

...
...
<%= will_paginate @rooms %>

<div id="order-by">
     <select>
        <option value="asc">Distance</option>
        <option value="asc">Name</option>
        <option value="asc">Price (low to high)</option>
        <option value="des">Price (high to low)</option>
        <option value="asc">Reviews</option>
      </select>
</div>

rooms_controller.rb

...
...
  def index
    @rooms = Room.paginate :page => params[:page], :per_page => 12
  end
...

My room model has listing_name:string, address: string, nightly_price:integer and has_many reviews. My review model belongs_to room. I am using geocoder gem for the location of an room.

I have searched allot and tried multiple things to make this work and I can not figure this one out. For any hints on how to solve this I would be really happy! If you need further information just let me know.

Answer 1

Something like:

index.html.erb

<%= will_paginate @rooms %>

<div id="order-by">
  <form>
    <select name="sort">
      <option value="distance">Distance</option>
      <option value="name">Name</option>
      <option value="price">Price (low to high)</option>
      <option value="price desc">Price (high to low)</option>
      <option value="review">Reviews</option>
    </select>

    <input type="submit" value="Sort"/>
  </form>
</div>

rooms_controller.rb

def index
  @rooms = Room.order(params[:sort]).paginate(page: params[:page], per_page: 12)
end

Also need to ensure that params[:sort] is included into only available values, eg:

 sort = params[:sort]
 sort = nil unless sort.in?(['distance', 'name', 'price', 'price desc', 'review'])
 @rooms = Room.order(sort).paginate(page: params[:page], per_page: 12)

Consider to use separate scope for sorting or some gem. eg ransack