Have you wanted to ever fuzzy search on your model without actually running Solr or Sphinx? Well this little function can help ease you in

widget.rb

class Widget < ActiveRecord::Base

  #
  # ..... extra crap here .....
  #

  scope :active, where(:status => [:active])

  #
  # This will fuzzy search the model for the provided query. It will split your
  # query string on the whitespace and search the models.
  # 
  # You can even further chain the query with scopes like so:
  #
  # ```rb
  # Widget.search('foo bar qux').active.limit(10)
  # ```
  #
  def self.joined_search(query)
    query = query.split(/\s+/)

    fields = {
      users: [:email, :first_name, :last_name],
      widgets: [:field, :another_field]
    }

    params = Array.new
    last   = Array.new 

    query.each do |q|
      fields.each do |table,cols|
        cols.each do |col|
          params << %Q{"#{table}"."#{col}" LIKE ?}
          last << "%#{q}%"
        end
      end
    end

    sql = [params.join(' OR ')] + last

    joins(:users).where(sql)
  end

  #
  # This will search only this model. It will not join another table to search.
  # This method can be chained as well with other active record statements
  #
  def self.search(query)
    query  = query.split(/\s+/)
    fields = self.attribute_names # you can specify an array of symbols if you want [:field, :field2]
    params = Array.new
    last   = Array.new
    query.each do |q|
      fields.each do |f|
        params << %Q{"#{self.table_name}"."#{f}" LIKE ?}
        last << "%#{q}%"
      end
    end
    sql = [params.join(' OR ')] + last
    where(sql)
  end

end