simple database search

[anthill]

Hi, i'm trying to perform a simple serach on a database. I have it working so far, but as soon as multiple words are entered into the search string, no results are displayed.

Heres an example of the code i'm using at the moment:

<?
mysql_pconnect("locahost","username","password");

mysql_select_db("results");

$result = mysql_query ("SELECT * FROM cars WHERE search LIKE '%$search%'");

while($r=mysql_fetch_array($result))

{

$column=$r["color"];
echo $column;
echo "<br>";
}

?>

So if someone types search for Ford, all Ford cars will be displayed, yet if someone searches for Ford Granada, nothing is displayed, yet Ford Granada is a name in column search.

How can I search through the column looking for multiple words rather than just single?

Thanks for taking time to read this post and thanks in advance for any replies.

Ant

[nnichols]

Hi there

It might be worth you looking at building your search query using MATCH ... AGAINST instead of a normal where clause, but that's one for you to read up on and decide for yourself.

Which ever way you perform your query I would suggest that you don't search for the combined search string (ie "Ford Grananda"). You would be better off taking the search string and splitting it into the separate words -

// let's trim and clean $search first
$search = trim($search);

// now let's split the string into individual words and store in array
$search_terms = explode(" ", $search);

// now we can use a loop to add each of the words to the query
// you might want to 'OR' or 'AND' them, or group the words
// differently, but you should get the idea
while (list ($val) = each ($search_terms)) {
$query .= "AND search LIKE '%$val%'";
}

Hope this helps 😉

P.S. When posting code please put it in [PHP ] [/PHP ] tags, it's much easier to read that way