Some example usage of levenshtein to calculate the difference between two strings.

levenshtein.sql

-- https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/fuzzystrmatch.html#id-1.11.7.26.7
-- Calculates the distance between two strings.

SELECT levenshtein('New York', 'New York'); -- 0
SELECT levenshtein('New York', 'New Jersey'); -- 5
SELECT levenshtein('New York', 'Dallas'); -- 8

-- find the opponent with the name closest to 'New York'
SELECT * FROM opponents WHERE team_id = 1 
  ORDER BY levenshtein(name, 'New York')

-- from ActiveRecord
name = "New York"
quoted_name = ActiveRecord::Base.connection.quote(name)
order_by = Arel.sql("levenshtein(name, #{quoted_name})")
Opponent.where(team_id: 1).order(order_by)