Count how much specific words are in a database row - php

Question

I have two lists of words and a database with more than thousand news articles.
I want to count how many of the words from the lists $badwords and $goodwords are in each article in my database. Next, I would like to save the two outcomes (of $badwords and $goodwords) per row in the columns badwords and goodwords. I will run this script with a cronjob.
My current table structure The last two rows are empty
TABLE news
-----------------
|ID|newstitle|newscontent|badwords|goodwords|
|1| Rain in London | It is horrible depressive weather in this nice city. | EMPTY | EMPTY |
|2| France wins the WorldCup | The player made a great goal. | EMPTY | EMPTY |
My desired table structure
The number of $badwords and $goodwords in the last two columns
TABLE news
-----------------
|ID|newstitle|newscontent|badwords|goodwords|
|1| Rain in London | It is horrible depressive weather in this nice city. | 2 | 1 |
|2| France wins the WorldCup | The player made a great goal. | 0 | 1 |
My current PHP code
<?php
//the wordlists
$badwords = "depressive horrible";
$goodwords = "great";
//connection to the database
$servername = "localhost";
$username = "user";
$password = "pass";
$dbname = "db";
$conn = new mysqli($servername, $username, $password, $dbname);
// here is my sql query
$sql = " UPDATE news
set badwords = (SELECT count (*) from news
where newscontent LIKE '.%$badwords%.')";
//close the connection
$conn->close();
?>

Answer 1

If I understand your question correctly you want to check if a certain wordlist exists in your database. In that case you're looking for a query like so (also use escaping in your queries depending on the db-class you use, e.g. mysqli_real_escape_string()):
SELECT COUNT(*) AS `count`
,`newscontent`
FROM `news`
WHERE `newscontent` = '" . $wordlist . "'
If you want to display how many times each wordlist exists in your database this is what you need:
SELECT COUNT(*) AS `count`
,`newscontent`
FROM `news`
GROUP BY `newscontent`
If you want to display how many strings you have for a given number of words this is what you're looking for:
<?php
$sql = new mysqli($host, $user, $password, $database);
$query = $sql->query('select * from `news`');
$summary = [];
while($record = $query->fetch_object()) {
$summary[count(explode(' ', $record->newscontent))]++;
}
echo '<pre>';
print_r($summary);
echo '</pre>';
If none of the above are what you're looking for than, after 4 times of reading your question, I literally have no clue what you're after.
Updated answer
Since you've updated your question I understand what you want. See the updated answer below.
<?php
// your db connection ...
// array with good and bad words
$good = [
'awesome',
'neat',
'fantastic',
'great',
// and so on
];
$bad = [
'horrible',
'worst',
'bad',
'terrific',
// and so on
];
// if you keep using your string approach you can set $good and $bad with $good = explode(' ', $goodwords); and $bad = explode(' ', $badwords);
// fetch the record you need
$query = $sql->query('select * from `news` where `ID` = 1'); // insert parameter for your ID here instead of just 1
$newsitem = $query->fetch_object();
// set up good and bad word counters
$totalGood = 0;
$totalBad = 0;
// check how many times each word is mentioned in newscontent
foreach($good as $word) {
// add spaces arround the word to make sure the full word is matched, not a part
$totalGood += substr_count($newsitem->newscontent, ' ' . $word . ' ');
}
// check how many times each word is mentioned in newscontent
foreach($bad as $word) {
// add spaces arround the word to make sure the full word is matched, not a part
$totalBad += substr_count($newsitem->newscontent, ' ' . $word . ' ');
}
// update the record
$sql->query("
update `news`
set `badwords` = " . $totalBad . ",
`goodword` = " . $totalGood . "
where `ID` = " . $newsitem->ID);
An interesting thing on text interpretation remains sarcasm. How would you deal with something like "Well, the weather in England is great again - as usual!" ;) Good luck though!