# EncryptedSearchAttributes

Auto populates encrypted fields that are designed for searching

Encrypting a field makes it very difficult to perform a case insensitive search for the columns data. This gem normalizes the text before encrypted it and storing it in a search column. The default normalization method is to convert the text to all lowercase, but you can specify your own normalization method.

This gem is intended to be used with the symmetric-encryption gem. It assumes that a `encrypted_search_attribute` column exists for the encrypted attribute.

## Examples

### Using the default normalization method

Let's assume we have the following ActiveRecord model defined.

```ruby
class Widget < ActiveRecord::Base
  attr_encrypted        :name
  attr_encrypted_search :name
end
```

This would require the database schema to look something like this.

```ruby
  create_table "patients", :force => true do |t|
    t.string "encrypted_name"
    t.string "encrypted_search_name"
  end
```

### Specifying a custom normalization method

You can specify custom normalizations in a couple of different ways

#### Procs

You can specify a proc that gets called to perform the normalization. This works well if you only have one field that you need to override the normalization for.

```ruby
class Widget < ActiveRecord::Base
  attr_encrypted        :name
  attr_encrypted_search :name,
                        normalize: ->(unencrypted_value) { enencrypted_value.to_s.downcase.gsub('.', '') }
end
```

#### Symbol referencing a method

```ruby
class Widget < ActiveRecord::Base
  attr_encrypted        :name
  attr_encrypted_search :name,
                        normalize: :normalize_search_value

  private

  def normalize_search_value(unencypted_value)
    enencrypted_value.to_s.downcase.gsub('.', '')
  end
end
```

## Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

    gem 'encrypted_search_attributes'

And then execute:

    $ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

    $ gem install encrypted_search_attributes

## Contributing

1. Fork it ( http://github.com/corgibytes/encrypted_search_attributes/fork )
2. Create your feature branch (`git checkout -b my-new-feature`)
3. Commit your changes (`git commit -am 'Add some feature'`)
4. Push to the branch (`git push origin my-new-feature`)
5. Create new Pull Request