How would you do a multiple word search

Anon

I am doing search system for a web site, the search will query a mysql database.

Single word search is straight forward enough but i cannot do a mutiple word search.

Could somebody help me on this??

Anon

I'll assume you've figured out how to get the words into an array (called $words).

foreach($words as $key=>$word)
{ $words[$key]="%word%"; // For that all-important wildcarding.
}

$search_clause=join(' OR ',$words);

You can insert $search_clause into your sql query and it will return matches containing any of the supplied words. (Obviously, joining them with AND will give matches returning all of the words.)

Anon

Cheers Weedpacket. But how would you get the words into an array?

Anon

Well, that depends on where they're coming from. If it's a text box they just fill in with "keyword searchword otherword" à la Google then it's just a matter of

$words=explode(' ',$_POST['textfield']);

Actually, I'd play it safer and catch multiple consecutive blank spaces by using:

$rawwords=preg_split(' ', $_POST['textfield'], -1, PREG_SPLIT_NOEMPTY); // See the manual to find out what all that means.

And then weeding out nonwords with

$words=array();
foreach($rawwords as $word)
{
if($word really is a genuine word)
{$words[]=$word;
}}