Combine two ActiveRecord::Relation objects

If you want to combine using AND (intersection), use merge:

first_name_relation.merge(last_name_relation)

If you want to combine using OR (union), use or^†:

first_name_relation.or(last_name_relation)

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^† Only in ActiveRecord 5+; for 4.2 install the where-or backport.

Relation objects can be converted to arrays. This negates being able to use any ActiveRecord methods on them afterwards, but I didn't need to. I did this:

name_relation = first_name_relation + last_name_relation

Ruby 1.9, rails 3.2

merge actually doesn't work like OR. It's simply intersection (AND)

I struggled with this problem to combine to ActiveRecord::Relation objects into one and I didn't found any working solution for me.

Instead of searching for right method creating an union from these two sets, I focused on algebra of sets. You can do it in different way using De Morgan's law

ActiveRecord provides merge method (AND) and also you can use not method or none_of (NOT).

search.where.none_of(search.where.not(id: ids_to_exclude).merge(search.where.not("title ILIKE ?", "%#{query}%")))

You have here (A u B)' = A' ^ B'

UPDATE: The solution above is good for more complex cases. In your case smth like that will be enough:

User.where('first_name LIKE ? OR last_name LIKE ?', 'Tobias', 'Fünke')