Searching MySql

[Anon]

I am building a search.

The form looks like this:

<form method="post" action="search.php">

<input type="text" name="search" size="25">

<input type = "hidden" name = "action" value = "search">
<input type="submit" value="Begin Searching!!">

</form>

Then....

$query = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM products WHERE name LIKE '%$search%' LIMIT 0, 30", $db);

while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($query)) {

    $variable1=$row["name"]; 

print ("$variable1");  
print "<br>";

}

If someone searches for hair gel, I want to print any records with hair or gel.

sammy

[Anon]

To do this, you need to separate the terms out, and call them as individual lines.

It's a pain in the -ss, but I know of no other way to do that.

Try using strpos and substr to break the input string down variables. I'd use an array to store the stripped-out words, so that you can use variable-sized queries.

Yeah, you're looking at a good, full, few pages of code to do it right, and have enough error-checking to make it reliable.

Here's some pseudo-code that might make it clear what I'm saying:

This is NOT USABLE CODE !!! It merely conveys flow control for how I'd approach this problem:

terms we want to search either/or for:

$input="mickey mouse";

#break the phrase into words:
$i=o;

do {

$word[$i]=substr($input, $i,    strpos($input, " "); 

$i=$i+strpos($input, " "); 

} while $i < sizeof($input) 

$query="select * from table where ";

for ($i=0; $i < sizeof($words); $i++)

{

$query=$query." field like '%$words[$i]%' ";

}

$result=db_exec($query);

---

$result would have what you seek.

-Ben