After reading "Nested with_scope" post I thought that it would be handy way to create entity lists with sorting, pagination and filtering features.

You could setup an around filter that would automatically paginate and filter your model entities.

class MyController < ApplicationController
  around_filter SearchFilter.new(:products, :search_string), :only => :list
  around_filter PagintationFilter.new(:products, 20), :only => :list

  def list
    @products = Product.find(:all)
  end
end

Those could be wrapped in some kind of DSL (class methods).

The problem with similar sorting filter is that AR::Base::with_scope doesn't allow :order param.