[Resolved] full-text search question

[jadeddog]

so i am just learning the full-text searching capabilities, because i want to switch my current search engine over to it, for fairly obvious reasons

below is the current test code im using to try and get a handle on what the full-text searching is like. now i have a form on another page that passes 'criteria' to this page. i set $userinput to this criteria and then search according to this specified criteria. the problem im having is that when i try and echo anything from the results, the page just displays empty. my query echos properly, or at least it looks right to me. here is what my query echos as if i use the word "test" for my userinput:

"SELECT *, MATCH(name, city, description, website, grouping, altGrouping) AGAINST('test') AS score FROM houses WHERE MATCH(name, city, description, website, grouping, altGrouping) AGAINST('test') ORDER BY score DESC"

my code is below, and any help would be appreciated.

<?

include("other.inc");
$connection = mysql_connect($host,$user,$password) or die ("couldn’t connect to server");
$db = mysql_select_db($database,$connection) or die ("Couldn’t select database.");

$userinput = "{$_POST['criteria']}";
$query = "SELECT *, MATCH(name, city, description, website, grouping, altGrouping) AGAINST('$userinput') AS score FROM houses 
WHERE MATCH(name, city, description, website, grouping, altGrouping) AGAINST('$userinput') ORDER BY score DESC"; 

$result = mysql_query($query) or die (mysql_error($connection));
//echo "$query";
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result,MYSQL_ASSOC)) 
{
	extract($row);
	echo "$name";
}

?>

[ppowell]

A few things to check for according to the MySQL manual:

1) does the word "test" appear in more than 50% of the rows returned? If so, then it will fail as MySQL will think of it as a "stopword", or common word and produce no results

2) does the word "test" appear in a table with fewer than 3 rows?

3) What is your minimum length setting in MySQL for search keyword criteria? Default is 4 letters but some systems may have it tweaked (I think it should be 3 because TLA's are federal government commonalities)

Phil

[jadeddog]

it turned out that my test table had the word test in almost every record, thus being over the 50% mark... thx for the help