create google like Snippet

[nozom]

Hi There

I have a string that i am using as a snippet for a little PHP search engine i've created.

so when someone types "Blue Widgets" the output in the search shows

1. Page name here
   this bit is where teh snippet goes and it comes up with Blue Widgets where Blue Widgets is mentioned.

This is fine however if the string is over 35 words long then i want to cut it short and put ... on the end. This is also fine but it looks a bit odd if the search results dont show Blue Widgets in those first 35 words.

What i want is something like google has got where it will pull out 35 words or so and skip between bits that aren't relevant to the search query.

Any ideas? ;-)

nozom

[kburger]

I do something similar to that. Here's part of that code. I'm sure you could modify it to suit your needs.

$query = "SELECT deal FROM deals WHERE deal LIKE '%$keyword%'";
$result = mysql_query($query) or die("Query failed: " . mysql_error());
$num = mysql_num_rows($result);

echo "Your search returned <strong>$num</strong> results:<ul>\n";
while (list($deal) = mysql_fetch_row($result)){
	$pos = strpos(strtolower($deal), strtolower($keyword));
	$start = $pos - 85;
	if ($start < 0) $start = 0;
	$shortdeal = substr($deal, $start, 175);
	$newdeal = eregi_replace ("$keyword", "<strong>\\\\0</strong>", $shortdeal);
	if ($start > 0) echo "...";
	echo "<li>$newdeal...</li>\n";
}
echo "</ul>";

Something along those lines. Obviously, I've removed a lot of the irrelevant code. I haven't looked it over too thoroughly, but hopefully I haven't removed anything vital.

[nozom]

Hi Kburger

Thanks for that, although i've come up with something very similar myself ;-) not quite as concise as yours and i've not come across that list function before, quite useful in cutting out BIG variable names and so on.

Cheers,
nozom