Help with search interphase

Anon

I'm trying to write a search interphase.

select * from tbl_name where text like '%$pattern%' ;

I use the above query to retrieve rows from a mysql table that has words similar to $pattern.

That works well, if $pattern is just a single word. But the whole idea falls apart when more than one word is being used.

For example, let's say I want to select rows that have one or more of the following words: valentine's day celebration. My query will only work for table rows that have all three words in the same order.

Any ideas on doing a boolean type search?

Thanks.

Richie.

Anon

Try doing:

$search_terms = Array();
$search_terms = split(" ", $pattern);

foreach($search_terms AS $id => $value)
$search_terms[$id] = "%".addslashes($value)."%";

$sql = "select * FROM tbl_name WHERE text like '".implode("' OR text like '", $search_terms)."';";

Now, your SQL should look like:

select * FROM table WHERE text like '%something%' OR text like '%something%' etc etc..

Creating a truly boolean search parser is a little beyond what could be covered here. Search the articles and google for hints. Hope that helps!

Chris King

amcgrath

You could explode the entries into an array and loop through them to build the sql statmement. IE:
$sql = "select * from table ";
$pattern_list = explode(" ",$user_text);

for ($x=0;$x<=count($user_text);$x++) {
if (!$x) {
$sql .= "where (column like '%$pattern_list[$x]%' " ;
} else {
$sql .= "or column like '%$pattern_list[$x]%' ";
}
$sql .= ")";

there's probably an easier way, that'll work for ya.

Anon

Great stuff. Thanks for the help.