similar text help??

[msnhockey]

I am not sure if I should be using similar_text for this or levenshtein but the problem i have is I am using three tables to get some information and in one of the tables the player names sometimes differ.

IE --> Dave or David and Matt or Matthew

now because this differs some of the info is not being grabbed because the name doesn't match. This would be easier if it had the playerid like the other 2 tables.

I am very inexperienced with similar text and levenshtein.

Here is the main part of my code for this

//get all players from team and their profile

$query = "select distinct p.*,r.* from profile p,regular r where r.team ='$team_name' and r.playerid=p.id and r.season = '2013-14'";

$myresult = mysql_query($query) or die(mysql_error());
$parray = array();
while($myrow = mysql_fetch_assoc($myresult) ){

if(in_array($myrow['playerid'],$parray) ) continue;
$parray[] = $myrow['playerid'];
$player_pos='';
$player_num='';
$player_name = $myrow['name'];
$reverse_name = explode(' ', $player_name);
$count = count($reverse_name); 
if ($count == 3) {
	$fname = mysql_real_escape_string($reverse_name[0]);
	$lname1 = mysql_real_escape_string($reverse_name[1]);
	$lname2 = mysql_real_escape_string($reverse_name[2]);  $lname = $lname1.' '. $lname2;

   } else {
		$fname = $reverse_name[0];
		$lname = mysql_real_escape_string($reverse_name[1]);
   }
		$pname = stripslashes($lname.', '. $fname);

$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM `nhl_player` WHERE `name` = '".mysql_escape_string($pname)."' ") or print(mysql_error());
while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)){
        $player_pos = str_replace('/','',$row['position']);
        $player_num = $row['number'];
 }
  $bdate = $myrow['birthdate'];
  $birthDate1  = date('m/d/Y', strtotime($bdate ));
  $birthDate = explode("/", $birthDate1);
  $age = (date("md", date("U", mktime(0, 0, 0, $birthDate[0],           $birthDate[1], $birthDate[2]))) > date("md")
    ? ((date("Y") - $birthDate[2]) - 1)
    : (date("Y") - $birthDate[2]));


if($myrow['position'] =='Goalie'){ 	
	$goalie_table_array2[] = array($player_num, $player_pos, "<a href=\"http://www.theufhl.com/nhl/players/?pid=" . $myrow['playerid'] . "\">$player_name</a>", $myrow['height'], $myrow['weight'], $myrow['birthdate'], $age,
                            $myrow['birthcity'].', '. $myrow['country']);
}
elseif($myrow['position'] =='Forward'){ 	
	$mytable_array[] = array($player_num, $player_pos, "<a href=\"http://www.theufhl.com/nhl/players/?pid=" . $myrow['playerid'] . "\">$player_name</a>", $myrow['height'], $myrow['weight'], $myrow['birthdate'], $age,
                            $myrow['birthcity'].', '. $myrow['country']);
}
else{
	$mytable_array2[] = array($player_num, $player_pos, "<a href=\"http://www.theufhl.com/nhl/players/?pid=" . $myrow['playerid'] . "\">$player_name</a>", $myrow['height'], $myrow['weight'], $myrow['birthdate'], $age,
                            $myrow['birthcity'].', '. $myrow['country']);
}                             
}  

is this what i should be looking at adding in or something similar.. i am going to keep trying while i get a response

 $all_players = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM `nhl_player` ");

                        while ($player = mysql_fetch_assoc($all_players)) {
                            similar_text($player['name'], $pname, $percentage);
                            if ($percentage >= 85) {
                                $player_row = $player;
                                break;
                            }

[msnhockey]

i got some decent results using this

$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM `nhl_player` ");
    while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)){

         similar_text($row['name'], $pname, $percentage);
                            if ($percentage >= 85) {
        $player_pos = str_replace('/','',$row['position']);
        $player_num = $row['number'];
                                break;
                            }  }

not sure if there is something more effective or not but its pretty bang on so far

[msnhockey]

i am not sure on the $percent thing on how well in actually executes

reason i say this is because if ($percentage >= 85) {

should show all results for a name being 85 or above ????

reason i ask is i have seen many players that if the match is say 93 percent it wont bring that player up. I have had at 90 and then when i set back to 85 some of the players that showed up at 90 disappear even if there is only one person with the same name in the database

[jeepin81]

You should probably attack the root problem and add the playerid to the third table and save yourself time in the long run. If your DB grows you're just going to run into more of a mess... bob, bobby, bobbi, robert.

[msnhockey]

I was thinking on doing that but i have alot of entries so it will take time but if i take the time now it wont be so bad in long run like you say