PHP Search Mechanism

[Manat]

Hello All

I have a question regarding a search box.
If I put a search box, php search box, onto my site, how would that work?

Our catalog is dynamic, so will the search query the catalog system, if not, then how? Or does it only search html text.

Also, in the search result pages, html links will be outputed based upon the search criteria, is there a way for me to append a query string into those links?

How exactly is this architectured?

[sdizier]

What exactly is the catalog you are searching is it a databse or external file. If it is a db lets say mysql then you could index the feilds that you want to search by. The command is fulltext for example

create table testTable
(
pk_tId int auto_increment not null,
productname varchar(20),
cost int,
details text,
primary key(pk_tId),
unique id(pk_tId),
fulltext(productname , cost, details) // this creates the indexed feilds
);

If you already have a table setup and want to index existing fields, use the ALTER TABLE command like this: ALTER TABLE myTable ADD FULLTEXT(field1, field2);

Then you may create an associated array for the results ranked from most relavant to least.

Hope that helps
Slan