On: Show HN: A gem to stop progressively building ActiveRecord queries

[troels]

Nice. I've built something very similar in my current app. In my app it's called `SearchModel` and descendants live within the `app/models` dir. I include some modules from `ActiveModel` to make it act as a regular db-backed model, which allows me to use it with `form_for`.

[5vforest → troels]

Ah, that's neat. I usually just build these forms without the Rails helpers, using something like:

    <form>
      <input type='text' name='email' value='<%= params[:email] %>' />
    </form>

Which works out nicely, since the method defaults to 'GET' and the action defaults to the current path.

[troels → 5vforest]

It'll do too, but I think it's nice to abstract the http-layer completely away from the view.

In case you want to replicate, I believe the relevant part is simply adding this to the base class:

    extend ActiveModel::Naming
    include ActiveModel::AttributeMethods
    def to_key
      []
    end

And then add `attr_reader` for each field.