Counting mySQL query matches for search

[Anon]

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to figure out a way to create a search feature for my PHP & mySQL-based content management script. All the ways of creating a search feature that I can find on the web in PHP and mySQL are by creating a separate "index" table listing all the words in each document, and then using the COUNT() function to order the results by relavence.

I don't want to use an index table because then I can't have a little description for each found result (with 3 or 4 words before and after the matched word, so that it shows actual phrases from the content).

Is there a way to search a mySQL database for matches of text and then order the results by how many matches there were? I needs to be fast too as there is a LOT of content to search through...

Any help would be very much appreciated!

Thanks in advance!
Kelly Lu

[Anon]

you can search a mysql database with keywords doing something like the following:

$query = mysql_query(SELECT * FROM table LIKE '%$keywords%");

and you can count the results by using the following:

$num_rows = mysql_num_rows($query);

thanks
- james

[Anon]

Thanks for the suggestion; however, won't the method that you suggested only give me a count of how many results there are? I need to be able to sort by how many matches in each result... any other suggestions?

TIA,

Kelly Lu