will_filter is a Rails engine plugin that provides a GUI for filtering your ActiveRecord models.

If you ever had to build an admin tool for your web site that displayed a list of objects that can be filtered using various criteria, this plugin will make your life easier. Adding a filtered page can now be a matter of adding two lines of code - one to your controller and one to your view. See examples below.

Add the following gems to your Gemfile:

gem 'will_filter', "~> 3.1.0" 
gem 'kaminari'

And run:

$ bundle

To configure and initialize will_filter engine, run the following commands:

$ rails generate will_filter  
$ rake db:migrate

At the top of your routes.rb file, add the following line:

mount WillFilter::Engine => "/will_filter"

To add a filtered result-set to your controller use the following method call:

class UsersController < ApplicationController

  def index
    @users = User.filter(:params => params)    
  end

end

Note: ‘User’ is a Rails ActiveRecord model

Now all you have to do is create a view for this action and add the following tag where you want the filter to be rendered:

<%= will_filter_tag(@users) %>

And optionally you can do (for results table):

<%= will_filter_table_tag(@users) %>

That’s it. This will render a filter box with various conditions, operators and values for the model object you selected.

Please read the following document to learn more about filter customization:

github.com/berk/will_filter/wiki/Customizing-Filters

Please read the following document to learn more about table tag customization:

github.com/berk/will_filter/wiki/Customizing-Table-View

Below are a couple of screenshot of what the filter looks like when it is rendered on a page:

This plugin comes with a dummy test project. To try out some of the examples, run the following commands:

$ git clone git://github.com/berk/will_filter.git
$ cd will_filter/test/dummy  
$ rake db:migrate 
$ rake samples:init
$ rails server

Open your browser and point to:

http://localhost:3000

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, email me at [email protected]

Authors

Michael Berkovich