Tutorial: Integrate Atlas Search into a Ruby on Rails App

Configure the Atlas Search feature in your Mongoid model.

First, update the Idea model to handle Atlas Search queries on the ideas collection by defining the search method in the model. The method self.search(query) defines a class method called search that takes a single argument query and returns the search results.

Open the app/models/idea.rb file and replace its contents with the following code:

class Idea
 include Mongoid::Document
 include Mongoid::Timestamps
 field :name, type: String
 field :description, type: String
 field :picture, type: String
 def self.search(query)
 aggregation_pipeline = [
 {
 "$search": {
 "index": "inspiration",
 "text": {
 "query": query,
 "path": ['name', 'description']
 },
 "sort": {
 "score": { "$meta": "searchScore" }
 }
 }
 },
 {
 "$limit": 20
 }
 ]
 results = collection.aggregate(aggregation_pipeline)
 search_results = results.to_a
 search_results.map do |result|
 Idea.new(
 id: result["_id"],
 name: result["name"],
 description: result["description"],
 picture: result["picture"]
 )
 end
 end
end

When you call idea.search("<example query>"), Mongoid performs the following actions:

1. Performs a full-text search by using the inspiration index.

2. Runs the query across the name and description fields.

3. Sorts the results by their relevance scores.

4. Limits the number of results to 20 to improve performance for queries on large collections.

The search_results variable then converts the raw results from MongoDB into an array of hashes that can be mapped to Idea model instances and rendered in your view files.

Add a Search action in your controller.

Now that you defined the Search query functionality in the Idea model, you must add an action to initiate queries.

Open the app/controllers/ideas_controller.rb file and add the following action to your IdeasController before the private declaration:

def search
 @query = params[:query]
 @ideas = @query.present? ? Idea.search(@query) : Idea.all
 render :display_results
end

Now, when you submit a Search query, Mongoid runs the search method in the Idea model. The results are then rendered in your view files.

Generate the Search controller.

Run the following command to generate the SearchesController and the display_results view file, which handle search requests and display the results, respectively:

rails generate controller Searches display_results

Open the newly created searches_controller.rb file and replace the contents with the following code:

class SearchesController < ApplicationController
 def display_results
 query = params[:query]
 @results = Idea.search(query)
 end
end

Open the app/views/searches/display_results.html.erb file and replace the contents with the following code, which renders the search results:

<div class="search-results">
 <h1>Search Results for "<%= params[:query] %>"</h1>
 <% if @results.empty? %>
 <p>No ideas found.</p>
 <% else %>
 <div class="idea-container">
 <% @results.each do |result| %>
 <div class="idea">
 <h2><%= result.name %></h2>
 <p><%= truncate(result.description, length: 150) %></p>
 <img src="<%= result.picture %>" alt="<%= result.name %>" />
 <p><%= link_to "View", idea_path(result.id) %></p>
 </div>
 <% end %>
 </div>
 <% end %>
</div>
<%= link_to "Back", ideas_path %>

Then, add the following code to your app/assets/stylesheets/application.css file to include basic styling for the search results:

.search-results {
 width: 80%;
 margin: 0 auto;
}
.idea-container {
 display: flex;
 flex-direction: column;
}
.idea {
 padding: 20px;
 border-bottom: 2px solid #ccc;
 border-radius: 10px 10px 0 0;
 margin-bottom: 10px;
}
.idea h2 {
 margin: 0;
}
.idea p {
 margin: 0;
}
.idea img {
 width: 100px;
 height: auto;
 display: block;
}
ul {
 list-style-type: none;
 padding: 0;
}

Create the Search form.

To enable Search queries directly in your application, open the app/views/ideas/index.html.erb file and add the following code:

<%= form_tag(search_results_path, method: :get, class: "form-inline") do %>
 <div class="input-group mb-3">
 <%= text_field_tag :query, params[:query], placeholder: "Search Ideas...", class: "form-control" %>
 <div class="input-group-append">
 <%= submit_tag "Search", class: "btn btn-primary text-white" %>
 </div>
 </div>
<% end %>

Add the following styling for the search bar to your application.css file:

.input-group {
 width: 100%;
}
.btn-primary {
 background-color: #007bff;
 border-color: #007bff;
 color: white;
}
.btn-primary:hover {
 background-color: #0056b3;
 border-color: #004085;
}

Update app routes for Search queries.

Replace the existing route in the config/routes.rb file with following route to display search results:

Rails.application.routes.draw do
 root to: "ideas#index"
 resources :ideas
 get '/search_results', to: 'searches#display_results', as: "search_results"
end

Start your application and run Search queries.

In your project directory, run the following command to start your application:

rails server

Navigate to http://127.0.0.1:3000/ to view the landing page.

To submit a query, type a term or phrase in the search bar then click the Search button. The following image depicts the search results for the term "outdoor":

The search results depend on the documents in your database. As the complexity of your data increases, you might need to perform more advanced queries to narrow results. To learn more about different Atlas Search queries and view examples, see the Query Reference in the Atlas documentation.