Implementing Unaccented Name Search in Postgres via Ecto

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Implementing Unaccented Name Search in Postgres via Ecto

Source: peterullrich.com

Type: Post

The content provides an in-depth guide to making unaccented name search viable in a Postgres-backed Elixir application using Ecto. The crux of the problem is differentiating between names that look the same to a human reader but are treated differently by Postgres, such as 'José' and 'Jose'. To solve this, Ullrich details the use of Postgres's 'unaccent' function and shows how to integrate it with Ecto. Furthermore, he describes the process of migration to include this functionality, starting from adding the 'unaccent' extension to creating an immutable version of the 'unaccent' function and using it to index names efficiently. The article also covers the final updating of the search query to leverage the new index, ensuring that it performs well even with large data sets. Lastly, potential caveats and resources for further reading are provided to give a comprehensive understanding of the solution.

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