Choosing a MySQL site search

[tbronson]

First time app attempt: using CodeIgniter to create a contact directory.

Task: Basic site search, to find multiple keywords in multiple fields of one or more tables.

Problem: I'm trying to figure out a good way to get started, hopefully one that I won't have to come back and redo later. Right now, want to search several fields in one table, like:

occurrence of either word1 or word2 in field1, field2, field3

Tried a MySQL fulltext index, but it doesn't return frequently used words, for ex: wordX is in most of the records, so doesn't appear, but I want those results.

Also, not sure how to split up keywords so that single instances of any of them are found separately.

Realize this is a broad question, and I'm reading up, just looking for some guidelines and pointers, a quick expert consultation... 🙂

Thanks!

[tbronson]

I stopped using the Fulltext index and did this:

$keywords = trim($keywords);
$keywords = preg_split("/[\s,]+/", $keywords);
foreach ($keywords as $value) {
WHERE title LIKE '%$valeu%' OR body LIKE '%$valeu%'; // actually using CodeIgniter Active Record $this->db->or_like();
}

Works so far.

Does that seem OK?