How to eliminate duplicate search results in MySQL? - php

Question

I am having some trouble displaying text from database using PHP and SQL. Below is a script similar to what I have.
$search_split = explode(" ", $search); //$search is what user entered
foreach ($search_split as $searcharray) {
$searched = mysqli_query($connect, "SELECT * FROM people WHERE `description` LIKE '%$searcharray%'");
while($info = mysqli_fetch_array($searched)) {
echo $info['description'];
}
}
So, for example the user enter 'He is male'. I split the word into three part 'He', 'is' and 'male' using 'explode' function. After that, I search the database for words that is similar to those three word. However, if a row have all the three words, it would display the row three times. How can I make it to display only once?

Answer 1

You could do something like this:
$search = 'test search me';
$search_split = array_map(function($piece) use ($mysqli_connection){
return "'%" . $mysqli_connection->real_escape_string($piece) . "%'";
}, explode(' ', $search)); //$search is what user entered
$search_split = implode(' OR `description` LIKE ', $search_split);
$sql = "SELECT * FROM people WHERE `description` LIKE $search_split";
echo $sql; // SELECT * FROM people WHERE `description` LIKE '%test%' OR `description` LIKE '%search%' OR `description` LIKE '%me%'
$searched = mysqli_query($connect, $sql);

Answer 2

Can you use full text search?
Add a full text index to the table
ALTER TABLE people ADD FULLTEXT(description);
Then you can use a query like this
SELECT *
FROM people
WHERE
MATCH ( description )
AGAINST ('+He +is +male' IN BOOLEAN MODE)

Answer 3

First store your results into one array then display it. Refer below code.
$search_split = explode(" ", $search); //$search is what user entered
foreach ($search_split as $searcharray) {
$searched = mysqli_query($connect, "SELECT * FROM people WHERE `description` LIKE '%$searcharray%'");
while($info = mysqli_fetch_array($searched)) {
$results[$info['YOUR_PRIMARY_KEY']] = $info['description']; // this will over write your previous record
}
}
foreach($results as $result){
echo $result;
}
Now every records display only once.

Answer 4

You have put your db query in a foreach loop, which loops 3 times (with the current data: he, is and male). What you want to do is put all the search variables in one query, something like:
$search_split = explode(" ", $search); //$search is what user entered
$querypart = "'%" . implode("%' AND '%", $search_split) . "%'"; // use OR or AND, to your liking
$searched = mysqli_query($connect, "SELECT * FROM people WHERE `description` LIKE " . $querypart);
while($info = mysqli_fetch_array($searched)) {
echo $info['description'];
}
This does not take any escaping/sanitizing of the query input, be aware...

Answer 5

$result = array();
$search_split = explode(" ", $search); //$search is what user entered
foreach ($search_split as $searcharray) {
$searched = mysqli_query($connect, "SELECT * FROM people WHERE `description` LIKE '%$searcharray%'");
while($info = mysqli_fetch_array($searched)) {
$result[] = $info['description'];
}
}
$finalres = array_unique($result);
so, finalres contains unique results
for($i = 0; $i < count($finalres); $i++)
echo $finalres[$i];