Sunspot solr: boost scalar fields

Question

I am scoping by multiple scalar fields and I am hoping to push the scoped results to the top of the search results without excluding results that do not meet the criteria for favorite authors.

Articles have and belong to many authors

This doesn't work but is what Im going for:

favorite_author_ids = @current_user.favorite_author_ids

@search = JournalArticle.solr_search do
  fulltext params[:article_title]
  any_of do
    boost(2.0) {with(:author_ids), favorite_author_ids}
    with(:author_ids), []
  end
end

I suppose I could do two searches and concatenate the results, but Im wondering if there is a cleaner way.

Answer 1

It doesn't make sense to have the boost inside of an any_of block. You probably want to do something like this:

favorite_author_ids = @current_user.favorite_author_ids

@search = JournalArticle.solr_search do
  fulltext params[:article_title] do
    boost(2.0) {with(:author_ids, favorite_author_ids)}
  end
end

You may need to increase the boost as well depending if you just want to increase the placement of favourite authors, or if you want them to always be at the top.