searching for "any word"

[Anon]

hi..

i am currently nearing completion of programming a search engine (to search products & FAQs in the database, of course).

i have the three following options on how to perform a keyword search, which are:
o search for all words
o search for any words
o search for exact sentence

the first and last method i was able to complete successfully. however my problem resides with the 2nd. what i have as of this moment is exploding $keyword, and searching for one word at a time. the problem with this is that since it searches for one at a time (and outputs as "results for word: -result 1<br>-result 2<br>-result 3<br>etc.,
it very likely to have repeats in the results.

so basically what i'm asking is if anyone can give me suggestions on how to have one set of non-repetitious results that have been found for three words, as opposed to 1 set of results for every word..

thanks in advance.

[marcel]

I have no idea how looks you data base
but your code sould look like:

$allKeywords = explode(" ",$keywords);
$whereClause = "";
$wordsNumber = sizeOf($allKeywords);

// build the WHERE clasue on 'the fly'
for($i=0; $i<$wordsNumber; $i++){
$whereClause .=" text_column LIKE '%$allKeywods%' OR ";
}

// cut the last OR
$whereCluse = substr($whereClause, 0, strlen($whereClause)-2 );

$selectString = 'SELECT ... FROM ... WHERE '.$whereClause ;

The tip si is create the "WHERE ..." clause on the fly.

PM

[Anon]

Can you perhaps put some comments so I can follow what's happening, if it's not asking too much? (I can sort of follow, but it's kind of hazy)

Thanks,
--anjee

[marcel]

OK.
I have made some spelling mistakes.
Just run the next code an you'll understand the idea.
<?php
$keywords="w1 w2 w3 w4";
$allKeywords = explode(" ",$keywords);
$whereClause = "";
$wordsNumber = sizeOf($allKeywords);

// build the WHERE clasue on 'the fly'
for($i=0; $i<$wordsNumber; $i++){
$whereClause .=" text_column LIKE '%$allKeywords[$i]%' OR ";
}

// cut the last OR
$whereClause = substr($whereClause, 0, strlen($whereClause)-3 );

$selectString = 'SELECT ... FROM ... WHERE '.$whereClause ;
print $selectString ;
?>

[Anon]

thank you so very much!

it works like a charm. now come o'er here and let mommy give you kisses.

okay, i won't go that far, but thanks a lot!

--angie

[Anon]

I on the lookout for search engine scripts (for a friend) and happened to see this message after completing the logic for search engine. If the search engine is to be implemented using the above method, irrelevant results may be returned too. Example searching of 'John Wales' will result in 'Mary Wales', 'XXXYYY Wales' be displayed too in the result.

I recommend using the str_replace function to replace all <space> or '+' sign (normal users are used to this) with the '%' sign. '%' sign in database query means anything in between. Then the search results will be narrow to results containing both John and Wales.

[Anon]

i have three search methods.
all words, any word, exact sentence. you just described the first one, which wasn't quite what i was asking.

[Anon]

simply use a variable.
if variable value=1 then do the first if 2 then use the script provided by Marcel and lastly if 3 then use this

select * from table where column like '%$string%'