Search

[sirmosc]

I am relatively new to PHP. Infact, the only programming experience that have is with VB. I am trying to write code for a search engine to search a table in my database and return results based on the entry in the search field. I can get the search to work if I type in the exact name of what is in the database, but I need to be able to to type in "d" for example and have all names that begin with d returned. Is there some kind of "Like" oprerator in PHP like there is in VB. I would appriciate the help.

Thanks in advance

[jernhenrik]

Don't think that there is a like function/operator in php, but if you use mysql as database, you can use mysql's own LIKE operator.

http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/String_comparison_functions.html

hth

[scoppc]

You can obviously use LIKE or else REGEXP

$sql="SELECT * FROM $tablename WHERE name LIKE 'd%'";

or

$sql="SELECT * FROM $tablename WHERE name REGEXP 'd.*'";

Read MySQL documentation for the details

[sirmosc]

Thanks for the help, it is working now

[OhLordy]

I've recently been working on a fuzzy search and have achived it with a keywords table like this
create table keywords(
unique_id int(11) not null auto_increment primary key,
keyword varchar(255) not null,
a int(2) not null default 0,
b int(2) not null default 0,
c int(2) not null default 0,
d int(2) not null default 0,
e int(2) not null default 0,
f int(2) not null default 0,
...
etc
...
z int(2) not null default 0,
0 int(2) not null default 0,
1 int(2) not null default 0,
...
etc
...
9 int(2) not null default 0);

and then when I insert into the table I also insert the number of occurences for each character (no special characters allowed).
Then in searching I can also search on the presence of letters pull out the results and then score each result on the presence of letters, the order of the letters from the start of the word and from the end of the word. There are also some phonetic functions such as metaphone and soundex that my search uses.
HTH
Rob

[OhLordy]

Sorry, didn't answer your question. You can use

<?
strpos($var,"string")!==false
?>

to check for and occurenceof "string" anywhere in $var or

<?
strpos($var,"string")===0
?>

to check for an occurence of "string" at the begining of $var
HTH
Rob