using LIKE with mulitple search options?

[cooper3000]

😕

Search form made up of 5 options.

1.Category
2.Business Name
3.Town
4.County
5.Postcode

I indicate to the user that they must enter data into box1 (category) or box2 (businessname), they are then asked to enter data into box3, or box4, or box5. Then press Search!

eg. user1 enters 'internet' into box1 and 'london' into box3, then presses search.

however

user2 could enter 'website world' into box2 and 'london' into box3, then presses search.

I need to find out how to script the Query so that mysql knows to return only data holding the info requested from the completed search form and ignores the non completed search boxes.

I would like to further complicate things by saying that i wish for boxes 1 & 2 to have the option of returning records that include part of the text entered..

eg. if 'internet web design' was entered into box1, all records in the category column containing the first word (in this case 'internet') were shown in the results.

If any one can help me, then please get in touch

cooper

[eriksmoen]

SELECT * FROM table WHERE category LIKE("%$box1%") OR category LIKE(.... OR businessname LIKE("%$box1%") OR businessname LIKE(...

or do

SELECT * FROM table WHERE $wherestatement

and put $wherestatement into a loop to generate your stuff.

[wempy]

so that you can include part of the text entered you will have to split the contents of the boxes up into individual words first using split(...) then construct the query much like eriksmoen has shown, but adding each word from the array that split() returns.

http://www.php.net/split