Avoiding select * queries in meta_search

Question

I'm using meta_search gem on a rails 3 site and I'm finding some performance problems with the select * queries generated by meta_search fetching the BLOB fields in the DB schema. I am not willing to migrate the underlying schema to solve this problem. Is there a way to include/exclude certain fields from the search query that get generated by meta_search?

Answer 1

The mechanism to define which fields are returned in a query within Rails Active Record is .select(...) which by default is *. Check this SO answer for a way of defining a default scope that includes everything except the one field.

A warning about this, however, is that you'll need to override the default scope when you want to write to the table -- once you use .select the fields are read-only.

I use the successor to meta_search called ransack, and given how brilliant its author Ernie Miller is, chances are there's a built in way to do this :-)

Blobs seemed like such a good idea when I first started using them ... but, eh, not so much.