Php mysql match (multiple) words in multiple columns with spaces - php

Question

I am trying to figure out how and what function i need for my query, still not sure on using Like, concat or what part etc.
My situation is as such
1.) I have multiple columns(Country, City, State, Location)
2.) Only 1 search input
3.) Search input can be 1 word, or multiple words also ignore spacing(e.g. "Center City or CenterCity or Center City Philadelphia) etc
And it will return the rows that matches the words from the different columns.
Below is my attempt, but it is not returning anything at the moment. Thanks for your time
Php:
<?php
ini_set('display_errors', 1); error_reporting(E_ALL);
include 'connect.php';
if($_POST)
{
$searchaddress = ($_POST['searchaddress']);
$result=mysqli_query($con,"SELECT *
FROM Listing WHERE CONCAT(country,state,city,Location) LIKE '%$searchaddress%' AND Status='Open'") or die( mysqli_error($con));
$output = array();
// fetch your results
while( $row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result) )
{
// add result row to your output's next index
$output[] = $row;
}
// echo the json encoded object
echo json_encode( $output );
}
?>

Answer 1

Without knowing your exact data and what $searchaddress is like, it is hard to tell why it fails.
You are talking about ingoring whitespaces, but just pass in a single searchtag - and the expression LIKE '%something something else%' will not ignore whitespaces.
If you want to have the least amount of results with all given words matching, you should put in more effort and use a or/and combination of searchtags / columns. You can do this programmatically.
Assuming, you have 2 keywords entered: Center Detroid, you basically want to generate the searchquery:
FROM Listing WHERE
(
country LIKE '%Center%' OR
state LIKE '%Center%' OR
city LIKE '%Center%' OR
Location LIKE '%Center%'
)
AND
(
country LIKE '%Detroid%' OR
state LIKE '%Detroid%' OR
city LIKE '%Detroid%' OR
Location LIKE '%Detroid%'
)
To achieve that, you need to know two things:
The fieldnames you want to search in.
The keywords.
Then, the following snippet will generate the where part as required:
$search = "Detroid City Center";
$keywords = explode (" ", $search);
$columns = array("country", "state", "city", "location");
$andParts = array();
foreach ($keywords AS $keyword){
$orParts = array();
foreach($columns AS $column){
$orParts[] = $column . " LIKE '%" . mysql_real_escape_string($keyword) . "%'";
}
$andParts[]= "(" . implode($orParts, " OR ") . ")";
}
$and = implode ($andParts, " AND ");
echo $and;
The example given in the array would produce
(
country LIKE '%Center%' OR
state LIKE '%Center%' OR
city LIKE '%Center%' OR
location LIKE '%Center%'
)
AND
(
country LIKE '%City%' OR
state LIKE '%City%' OR
city LIKE '%City%' OR
location LIKE '%City%'
)
AND
(
country LIKE '%Detroid%' OR
state LIKE '%Detroid%' OR
city LIKE '%Detroid%' OR
location LIKE '%Detroid%'
)
This will Match ANY row, where Center, City or Detroid is appearing AT LEAST ONCE in ONE of all (search-)fields per row.

Answer 2

Updated answer for searching each word in the address fields:
$searchaddress = "some address to find";
$address_parts = explode(" ", trim($searchaddress));
$sql_parts = array();
foreach($address_parts as $part) {
$sql_parts[] = 'full_address LIKE "%'.$part.'%"';
}
$query = 'SELECT *, CONCAT(country,state,city,Location) AS full_address FROM Listing WHERE `Status` = "Open" HAVING '.implode(' OR ', $sql_parts);