MySQL fulltext

[saraadmin]

This is isn't strictly PHP related...

Is there a way of giving a field in a database table a higher weighting in a MySQL fulltext index?

e.g.

ARTISTS(id, name, bio)

sql> alter table artists add fulltext (name, bio);

The artists table has 'name' and 'bio'(graphy) fields which are both indexed for fulltext searches.

sql> select id, name from artists where match (name, bio) against ('john smith');

If one artist, say Joe Bloggs, often mentions another artist, say John Smith, in his biography, then a fulltext search for "john smith" will return Joe Bloggs as being more relevant than John Smith. I understand that technically this is correct, but I'd like a search for "john smith" to return more obvious results, i.e. John Smith first.

Does MySQL provide a mechanism where I can assign the 'name' field a greater weight that the 'bio' field?

[mrhappiness]

SELECT
  id, name,
  name = 'john smith',
  name LIKE '%john smith%'
FROM artists 
WHERE match (name, bio) against ('john smith')

execuetthis query in phpmyadmin and have a look at the two additional columns, maybe you can use one of them for an ORDER BY statement

[saraadmin]

Ah, yes; I see where you're going.

Thanks!