Doctrine search a string in multiple columns - php

Question

I hope you can help :)
This is how the table looks:
+------------+----------------+------------------+---------+
| firstName | lastName | email | etc... |
+------------+----------------+------------------+---------+
| John | Doe | john#doe.com | etc... |
+------------+----------------+------------------+---------+
| John | Michaels | john#michaels.es | etc... |
+------------+----------------+------------------+---------+
This is how the code looks:
if($_GET['search-customers'] != '') {
$busqueda = $_GET['search-customers'];
$query->andWhere("(c.firstName LIKE '%$busqueda%' OR c.lastName LIKE '%$busqueda%' OR c.email LIKE '%$busqueda%')");
}
With that QUERY:
If I input: John in the search box, it gives me the 2 results.
OK
If I input: John D in the search box, it doesn't give me any result. FAIL
All right, I understand, When I type "John D", it try to find first in firstName (doesn't match) and also it doesn't match lastName or email.
How can I combine them?
The idea its to find the complete string in all possibilities.
Thanks!

Answer 1

I will provide you a different alternative using MySQL's Full-Text Search Functions. Lets begin to prepare the table:
ALTER TABLE persons ADD FULLTEXT (`firstname`, `lastname`);
Now, firstname and lastname are columns to be used by full-text in order to search for matches:
SELECT * FROM persons
WHERE MATCH (firstname,lastname)
AGAINST ('John D' IN NATURAL LANGUAGE MODE);
The result will be:
+------------+----------------+------------------+---------+
| firstName | lastName | email | etc... |
+------------+----------------+------------------+---------+
| John | Doe | john#doe.com | etc... |
+------------+----------------+------------------+---------+
| John | Michaels | john#michaels.es | etc... |
+------------+----------------+------------------+---------+
Why both? Because John (as a word) was found, however John Doe is in the first row because has much similitude with the term of search.
Say, that lets apply this tool with Doctrine. I will assume that your model looks like this:
class Person{
/** #column(type="string", name="firstname")*/
protected $firstName;
/** #column(type="string", name="lastname")*/
protected $lastName;
/** #column(type="string")*/
protected $email;
}
Lets create the search function:
public function search($term){
$rsm = new ResultSetMapping();
// Specify the object type to be returned in results
$rsm->addEntityResult('Models\Person', 'p');
// references each attribute with table's columns
$rsm->addFieldResult('p', 'firstName', 'firstName');
$rsm->addFieldResult('p', 'lastName', 'lastname');
$rsm->addFieldResult('p', 'email', 'email');
// create a native query
$sql = 'select p.firstName, p.lastname, p.email from persons p
where match(p.firstname, p.lastname) against(?)';
// execute the query
$query = $em->createNativeQuery($sql, $rsm);
$query->setParameter(1, $term);
// getting the results
return $query->getResult();
}
Finnally, and example:
$term = 'John D';
$results = search($term);
// two results
echo count($results);
Additional notes:
Before mysql 5.7, Full-Text only can be added just to MyISAM tables.
Only can be indexed CHAR, VARCHAR, or TEXT columns.
When using IN NATURAL LANGUAGE MODE in a search, mysql returns an empty resultse when the results represent < 50% of the records.

Answer 2

Maybe you could use the explode function like this:
$busqueda = $_GET['search-customers'];
$names = explode(' ',$busqueda);
if(count($names)>1){
$query->andWhere("(c.firstName LIKE '%{$names[0]}%' AND c.lastName LIKE '%{$names[1]}%')");
}else{
$query->andWhere("(c.firstName LIKE '%$busqueda%' OR c.lastName LIKE '%$busqueda%' OR c.email LIKE '%$busqueda%')");
}
but, using like %word% is inefficient, because it can't use index.

Answer 3

Finally, I decided to concat firstName and lastName. I excluded the email then the query looks like that:
$busqueda = $_GET['search-customers'];
$names = explode(' ',$busqueda);
$hasemail = strpos('#', $busqueda);
if ( $hasemail ) {
$query->andWhere("c.email LIKE '%$busqueda%'");
} else {
$query->andWhere("( CONCAT(c.firstName,' ',c.lastName) LIKE '%$busqueda%' OR c.email LIKE '%$busqueda%')");
}

Answer 4

In your repository you could do something like this:
public function findByTerms($terms) : array
{
$alias = "d";
$qb = $this->createQueryBuilder($alias);
foreach (explode(" ", $terms) as $i => $term) {
$qb
->andWhere($qb->expr()->orX( // nested condition
$qb->expr()->like($alias . ".name", ":term" . $i),
$qb->expr()->like($alias . ".description", ":term" . $i)
))
->setParameter("term" . $i, "%" . $term . "%")
;
}
return $qb->getQuery()->getResult();
}
The Query Builder is able to generate complex queries that scale to your needs