IndexTank autocomplete not working in Rails 3 with the Tanker gem

Question

I'm having trouble getting Indextank's AutoComplete feature to work in my Rails application. I'm using searchify to host my index and the Tanker gem to create my index (https://github.com/kidpollo/tanker). I have followed the guide here (http://www.searchify.com/documentation/tutorial-autocomplete) and here (https://github.com/flaptor/indextank-jquery/) to get it working but I get no results back. I have enabled the public API in the searchify dashboard.

I think the problem is to do with the way the Tanker gem indexes the data (It can index multiple models in one index). The same issue was reported here - https://github.com/kidpollo/tanker/issues/25 - but i'm confused with the resolution that was given. I'm not sure what is meant by :indexes => :text in this instance. Can anyone shed a bit more light on what I need to do?

This is my model where I index data. No other model indexes data yet

class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
  include Tanker

  # Relationships
  belongs_to :user
  has_many :comments

  tankit index do
    indexes :title
    indexes :description
    indexes :post_comments do
      comments.map {|comment| comment.description }
    end
  end

  # define the callbacks to update or delete the index upon saving and deleting records
  after_save :update_tank_indexes
  after_destroy :delete_tank_indexes
end

This is the code I've used to test autocomplete. I have also tried using the example from https://github.com/flaptor/indextank-jquery/

<script src='https://raw.github.com/flaptor/indextank-jquery/master/jquery.indextank.ize.js' type='text/javascript'></script>
<script src='https://raw.github.com/flaptor/indextank-jquery/master/jquery.indextank.autocomplete.js' type='text/javascript'></script>

<script type='text/javascript'> 
  var publicApiUrl = "myPublicURL";
  var indexName = "myIndexName";
</script> 

<script type='text/javascript'>
  $(document).ready(function(){
      // let the form be 'indextank-aware'
      $("#myform").indextank_Ize(publicApiUrl, indexName);
      // let the query box have autocomplete
      $("#query").indextank_Autocomplete();
  });
</script>

<%= form_tag 'posts/search', :method => :get, :id => 'myForm' do %>
  <%= text_field_tag :query, "", :id => 'query' %>
  <button type="submit">Search</button>
<% end %>

Answer 1

Hey Chris here from Searchify. I'm too familiar with the Tanker gem yet. But Searchify/IndexTank by default searches in the document field called 'text', including for autocomplete suggestions. So try indexing your data (title, description, or post_comments, from your code snippet) in the 'text' field. If you still have problems, contact me via the website or our support email and I can look at your index to see how you (and tanker) are indexing things.