Rails auto_complete with a subset of objects

Question

Here are my models:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many    :artists
end

class Artist < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to    :user
end

I am trying to implement an auto_complete text field where artist names are auto completed:

<%= text_field_with_auto_complete :artist, :name, { :size => 60}, {:skip_style => false, :tokens => ','} %>

This works but autocompletes over all Artists defined in the database. What do I need to do to limit the returned auto_complete results to only the Artists belonging to the logged in User?

Thanks a lot!

Answer 1

Presumably you've got something like this in your controller:

def auto_complete_for_artist_name
  @artists = Artist.find(:all, 
   :conditions => "name LIKE (?)", params[:artist][:name])
end

You'll need to change that to either add the current user to the conditions or use the association like this:

def auto_complete_for_artist_name
  # assumes you have a 'current_user' method 
  # which returns the current logged in user
  @artists = current_user.artists.find(:all, 
     :conditions => "name LIKE (?)", params[:artist][:name])
end

That will give you just the artists belonging to the current user.