Ruby on Rails: Select days/months/years ago search

Question

I'm trying to give the user an option to search on a timescale. I am wanting a drop down menu to display options in a drop down menu like this:

Search from: 3 days ago, 1 week ago, 1 month ago, 6 months ago, 1 year. ect.

I understand that I have to use DateTime.now.to_date - 3.days so rails understands that I want to query 3 days ago, but I'm not to sure how I would go about making the user see the 3 days ago option as text in the drop down, but query DateTime.now.to_date - 3.days

Thanks

My search view looks like this at the moment:

    <h1>Search</h1>

<% if @project_search.total_entries > 0 %>
<%= form_tag search_path, method: :get do %>

Client :
<%= select(@projects, :client, Project.all.map {|p| [p.client]}.uniq, :prompt => "-Any-", :selected => params[:client]) %></br>

Industry :
<%= select(@projects, :industry, Project.all.map {|p| [p.industry]}.uniq, :prompt => "-Any-", :selected => params[:industry]) %></br>

Role :
<%= select(@projects, :role, Project.all.map {|p| [p.role]}.uniq, :prompt => "-Any-", :selected => params[:role]) %></br>

Technologies :
<%= select(@projects, :tech, Project.all.map {|p| [p.tech]}.uniq, :prompt => "-Any-", :selected => params[:tech]) %></br>

Business Division :

<%= select(@projects, :business_div, Project.all.map {|p| [p.business_div]}.uniq, :prompt => "-Any-", :selected => params[:business_div]) %></br>

Project Owner :
<%= select(@projects, :project_owner, Project.all.map {|p| [p.project_owner]}.uniq, :prompt => "-Any-", :selected => params[:project_owner]) %></br>

Exception PM
<%= select(@projects, :exception_pm, Project.all.map {|p| [p.exception_pm]}.uniq, :prompt => "-Any-", :selected => params[:exception_pm]) %></br>




<%= select_tag "start_date", options_for_select({
      "3 days ago"   => 3.days,   # =    259_200 sec.
      "1 week ago"   => 1.week,   # =    604_800 sec.
      "1 month ago"  => 1.month,  # =  2_592_000 sec.
      "6 months ago" => 6.months, # = 15_552_000 sec.
      "1 year ago"   => 1.year,   # = 31_557_600 sec.
    }) %>


Project Dates between

<%#=  text_field_tag("start_date") %>

and

<%= text_field_tag("end_date") %></br>


Status :

<%= select(@projects, :status, Project.all.map {|p| [p.status]}.uniq, :prompt => "-Any-", :selected => params[:status]) %></br>

Keywords :

<%= text_field_tag :keywords, params[:keywords] %></br>

<%= submit_tag "Search", name: nil %>

<% end %>

My model:

class Project < ActiveRecord::Base
  attr_accessible :business_div, :client, :customer_benifits, :edited_date, :end_date, :entry_date, :exception_pm, :financials, :industry, :keywords, :lessons_learned, :project_name, :project_owner, :role, :start_date, :status, :summary, :tech

validates_presence_of :business_div, :client, :customer_benifits, :end_date, :exception_pm, :financials, :industry, :keywords, :lessons_learned, :project_name, :project_owner, :role, :start_date, :status, :summary, :tech


def self.search(search_client, search_industry, search_role, search_tech, search_business_div, search_project_owner, search_exception_pm, search_status, search_start_date, search_end_date, search_keywords) 
  return scoped unless search_client.present? || search_industry.present? || search_role.present? || search_tech.present? || search_business_div.present? || search_project_owner.present? || search_exception_pm.present? || search_status.present? || search_start_date.present? || search_end_date.present? || search_keywords.present?




  where(['client LIKE ? AND industry LIKE ? AND role LIKE ? AND tech LIKE ? AND business_div LIKE ? AND project_owner LIKE ? AND exception_pm LIKE ? AND status LIKE ? AND DATE(start_date) BETWEEN ? AND ? AND DATE(end_date) BETWEEN ? AND ? AND keywords LIKE ?', 
      "%#{search_client}%", "%#{search_industry}%" , "%#{search_role}%" , "%#{search_tech}%" , "%#{search_business_div}%" , 
      "%#{search_project_owner}%" , "%#{search_exception_pm}%" , "%#{search_status}%", 
      search_start_date, search_end_date, search_start_date, search_end_date,"%#{search_keywords}%"
    ])



end


def self.paginated_for_index(projects_per_page, current_page)
    paginate(:per_page => projects_per_page, :page => current_page)
  end

end

Answer 1

Use Natural Language processing powered by chronic gem written by github guys. Get range in human readable format from the user & then use chronic to parse them into a fully valid date that ruby understands and can be passed as a param to Active Record for quering the database

here some examples:

1.9.3p194 :001 > require 'chronic'
 => true 
1.9.3p194 :002 > Chronic.parse '3 days ago'
 => 2012-07-31 15:20:59 +0530 
1.9.3p194 :003 > Chronic.parse '1 week ago'
 => 2012-07-27 15:22:15 +0530 
1.9.3p194 :004 > Chronic.parse '1 month ago'
 => 2012-07-03 15:22:26 +0530 
1.9.3p194 :005 > Chronic.parse '6 months ago'
 => 2012-02-03 15:23:25 +0530 
1.9.3p194 :006 > Chronic.parse '1 year ago'
 => 2011-08-03 15:23:34 +0530

Now, you also get bit francy here and also do something like

1.9.3p194 :007 > Chronic.parse 'last night'
 => 2012-08-02 22:00:00 +0530 

More examples are available in the README but since its pretty flexible, I would say you can also get creative while taking input from user. so instead of pre-determined values in select box(which you still can do), you can allow the user to select any arbitrary date. I understand this is not the traditional way but I think using NLP is quite cool! so try it

Answer 2

You could specify the time range in seconds:

<%= select_tag "ago", options_for_select({
      "3 days ago"   => 3.days,   # =    259_200 sec.
      "1 week ago"   => 1.week,   # =    604_800 sec.
      "1 month ago"  => 1.month,  # =  2_592_000 sec.
      "6 months ago" => 6.months, # = 15_552_000 sec.
      "1 year ago"   => 1.year,   # = 31_557_600 sec.
    }) %>

And use that value in your query:

Model.where("created_at >", Time.now - params[:ago])