Using instance variables inside the Sunspot.search method

[Matt Coneybeare]

First, thanks for the excellent gem and support group!

I am having trouble understanding why I am can't use instance variables in the Sunspot.search method.

 

Using this code, @search_term ends up being nil and @page ends up being 0 (nil)

============================

@search_term = params[:id]

@page = params[:page] || 1

search = Sunspot.search([Sound, UserSound]) do

  keywords @search_term

  with :published, true

  paginate :page => @page, :per_page => Sound.per_page

end

=============================

If I ditch the instance variables and use a local variable, everything is as expected

=============================

search_term = params[:id]

page = params[:page] || 1

search = Sunspot.search([Sound, UserSound]) do

  keywords search__term

  with :published, true

  paginate :page => page, :per_page => Sound.per_page

end

=============================

Can anybody explain why this is?

Thanks,

Matt

[Matthew A. Brown]

Hi Matt,

The reason for this is that in order to provide the DSL for building
the search (methods like 'keywords', 'with', and 'paginate' in your
example), Sunspot has to change the evaluation context of the search
block. Local variables are always retained inside blocks (blocks are
closures), and Sunspot does some Ruby dark magic so that you can still
access methods from the calling context when you're inside the search
DSL; but instance variables are very difficult to expose and so
Sunspot doesn't attempt it.

Sunspot does allow you to provide a block parameter to the DSL block,
in which case the parameter exposes the DSL, and Sunspot doesn't
change the calling context; so, the following would work:

search = Sunspot.search([Sound, UserSound]) do |query|
query.keywords @search_term
query.with :published, true
query.paginate :page => @page, :per_page => Sound.per_page
end

Hope that clears things up.
Mat

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