title: Searching with acts_as_taggable_on
body: <p>I'm trying to search through a model for all records with a certain tag.</p>
  
  <p>Sample output we are trying to search:</p>
  
  <pre><code>ruby-1.9.2-p0 :1 &gt; Question.last.tags
  =&gt; [#&lt;ActsAsTaggableOn::Tag id: 2, name: "preferences"&gt;, #&lt;ActsAsTaggableOn::Tag id: 13, name: "travel"&gt;]
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>So, <code>Question</code> has <code>tags</code> such as preferences and travel. I tried:</p>
  
  <pre><code>@tags = @questions.where("tags LIKE ?", "%#{params[:tags]}%")
  =&gt; []
  
  @tags = @questions.where("tag LIKE ?", "%#{params[:tags]}%")
  =&gt; []
  
  @tags = @questions.where("tag_list LIKE ?", "%#{params[:tags]}%")
  =&gt; BadFieldError: Unknown column 'tag_list'
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>How can I return the top record when <code>params[:tags]</code> is, for example, "refere" or "ences"?</p>
  
  <h3>Question model</h3>
  
  <pre><code>class Question &lt; ActiveRecord::Base
    has_many ...
    acts_as_taggable_on :tags
  end
  </code></pre>
  
  <h2>Second Try</h2>
  
  <p>I just created a custom controller action to try to change the query as per <b>@Nash</b>'s suggestion. How can I correct it?</p>
  
  <pre><code>def autocomplete_question_tags
    @tags = Question.tagged_with("%#{params[:term]}", :any =&gt; true)
    respond_to do |format|
        format.json
    end
  end
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Upon entering 'travel' into the form:</p>
  
  <p><code>Started GET "/answers/autocomplete_question_tags?term=travel" for 127.0.0.1 at 2011-04-16 20:37:34 -0400<br>
    Processing by AnswersController#autocomplete_question_tags as JSON<br>
    Parameters: {"term"=&gt;"travel"}<br>
  {"term"=&gt;"travel", "action"=&gt;"autocomplete_question_tags", "controller"=&gt;"answers"}<br>
    SQL (1.8ms)  SHOW TABLES<br>
    SQL (0.8ms)  SELECT COUNT(*) AS count_id FROM (SELECT 1 FROM 'questions' WHERE (questions.id IN (SELECT taggings.taggable_id FROM taggings JOIN tags ON taggings.tag_id = tags.id AND (tags.name LIKE '%travel') WHERE taggings.taggable_type = 'Question'))) AS subquery<br>
  logger.debug: 1 result in query<br>
  Completed   in 114ms</code></p>
  
  <p><code>ActionView::MissingTemplate (Missing template answers/autocomplete_question_tags with   {:handlers=&gt;[:erb, :rjs, :builder, :rhtml, :rxml, :haml], :formats=&gt;[:json], :locale=&gt;[:en, :en]} in view paths "/Users/san/Documents/san/apl/app/views",<br>
    app/controllers/answers_controller.rb:36:in 'autocomplete_question_tags'</code></p>
  
  <p><code>Rendered /Users/san/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p0/gems/actionpack-3.0.1/lib/action_dispatch/middleware/templates/rescues/missing_template.erb within rescues/layout (0.7ms)</code></p>