How to search singular/plurals in php mysql - php

When I enter word (ex: freshers) I want fresher and freshers records both currently I am getting only freshers records. My code is like this:
$search='freshers';
$qry=mysql_query("select count(*) from jobs where job_title like '%$search%' or MATCH(job_title)
AGAINST('$search' IN BOOLEAN MODE)");
when the search word is freshers I m getting count as 1200. When the search word is fresher I am again getting count as 2000.
How to get almost same count when I enter either freshers or fresher.

You cannot get precisely the same matching-record count from any MySQL technology with a search term that's either singular or plural.
MySQL doesn't have the smarts to know that freshers is the plural of fresher or children is the plural of child. If you want to do this with MySQL you'll have to start your search with the singular form of the word for which you want the plural.
Neither does MySQL know that mice is the plural of mouse.
If you need automated plural/singular functionality you may want to investigate Lucene or some other natural language search tech. The name of the capability you seek is "stemming."
But you can use FULLTEXT search with terms with trailing asterisks. For example, 'fresher*' matches fresher, freshers, and even fresherola. This will extend a search from singular to plural. It will not work the other way around. It
select count(*)
from jobs
where MATCH(job_title) AGAINST('fresher*' IN BOOLEAN MODE)
There are some other modifying characters for boolean mode search terms. They are mentioned here:
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/fulltext-boolean.html
Pro tip: column LIKE '%searchterm%' is probably the slowest way MySQL offers to search a column. It is guaranteed to scan the whole table.
Pro tip: FULLTEXT search is inherently a bit fuzzy. Expecting crisp record counts from it is probably a path to confusion.

try this
$search='fresher';
$qry=mysql_query("select count(*) from jobs where job_title like '$search%'

Related

Querying a table where the field contains any order of given text strings

I want to query a table as follows:
I have a field called "category" and my input match contains N separate words. I want the query to match all rows that contain all N words, but in any order.
For example if the field category contains "hello good morning world", my input query can contain "hello morning" or "good" or "world hello" and all are matches to the query.
How do I formulate such an SQL expression?
Also it would be good if the query can be made case insensitive.
If you are using MySQL you can use the boolean fulltext search feature to achieve this. You can put a + in front of each term and then only results with all the terms, in any order, will be returned. You will need to make sure the column containing the category field has a fulltext index specified on it for this to work. Other database engines probably have similar features. So for example you might do something like the following assuming there were a fulltext index over the category column...
SELECT * FROM myTable WHERE MATCH (category) AGAINST ('+term1 +term2 +term3' IN BOOLEAN MODE);
I would avoid using the "LIKE" operator as others have suggested you would have to worry about the headache of mixed upper/lower case and if you have a large database using a % in the front of a LIKE search term is going to cause a full table scan instead of using an index which is horrible for performance.
I'm not writing the loop that will build this query for you. This will get the job done, but it will be pretty inefficient.
SELECT * FROM table
WHERE (
TOUPPER(category) LIKE '*HELLO*' AND
TOUPPER(category) LIKE '*GOOD*' AND
TOUPPER(category) LIKE '*MORNING*' AND
TOUPPER(category) LIKE '*WORLD*'
);
You could also research using REGEXes with SQL.

Searching a field for the whole word, and nothing but the word

I have a PHP interface with a keyword search, working off a DB(MySQL) which has a Keywords field.
The way in which the keywords field is set up is as follows, it is a varchar with all the words formatted as shown below...
the, there, theyre, their, thermal etc...
if i want to just return the exact word 'the' from the search how would this be achieved?
I have tried using 'the%' and '%the' in the PHP and it fails to work by not returning all of the rows where the keyword appears in.
is there a better (more accurate) way to go about this?
Thanks
If you want to select the rows that have exactly the keyword the:
SELECT * FROM table WHERE keyword='the'
If you want to select the rows that have the keyword the anywhere in them:
SELECT * FROM table WHERE keyword LIKE '%the%'
If you want to select the rows that start with the keyword the:
SELECT * FROM table WHERE keyword LIKE 'the%'
If you want to select the rows that end with the keyword the:
SELECT * FROM table WHERE keyword LIKE '%the'
Try this
SELECT * FROM tablename
WHERE fieldname REGEXP '[[:<:]]test[[:>:]]'
[[:<:]] and [[:>:]] are markers for word boundaries.
MySQL Regular Expressions
if you also search for the commas, you can be sure you are getting the whole word.
where keywordField like '%, the, %'
or keywordField like '%, the'
or keywordField like 'the, %'
maybe I didn't understand the question properly... but If you want all the words where 'the' appears, a LIKE '%word%' should work.
If the DB of words is HUGE MySQL may fail to retrieve some of the words, that can be solved in 2 ways...
1- get a DB that support bigger sizes (not many ppl would chose this one tho). For example SQL Server has a 'CONTAINS' function that works better than LIKE '%word%'.
2- use a external search tool that uses inverted index search. I used Sphinx for a project and it works quite good. This is better if you rarely UPDATE the rows of the data you want to search from, which should be the case.
Sphinx for example would generate a file from your MySQL table and use this file to solve the search (it's very fast), this file should be re-indexed everytime you do a insert or update on the table, making it a much better solution if you rarely update or insert new rows.
It looks like you have a one to many relationship going on within a column. It might be better to create a separate table for keywords with a row for each keyword and a foreign key to whatever it is you're searching on.
Doing like '%???%' is generally a bad idea because the DB can't make use of an index so it will scan the whole table. Whether this matters will depend on the size of data you're working with but its worth considering up front. The single best way to help DB performance is in the initial table design. This can be tricky to change later.

MySQL, PHP Relative search results / Optimization

I understand LIKE results with wildcards etc. What I need to know is a good way to get search results with the most relative at the top.
For Example:
I search for "Front Brake CarModel" or something similar.
Currently I explode the string by spaces and create an addition OR/WHERE state so the query would look something like this .
SELECT * FROM table WHERE article_text LIKE '%Front%' OR article_text LIKE '%Brake%' OR article_text LIKE '%CarModel%'
Due to my novice searching skills, this is not great as it get results for every word in the search term. What I would like to happen is get the result and sort with the articles with the most found words at the top. If that makes sense.
Advice?
EDIT : Table is type InnoDB and cannot change type due to foreign key restraints. Thus removing the ability for me to use FULLTEXT indexing :(
This can be done easily with a fulltext index.
ALTER TABLE table ADD FULLTEXT INDEX `ft_search` (`article_text`);
SELECT *, MATCH(article_text) AGAINST('Front Brake CarModel') AS score
FROM table
WHERE MATCH(article_text) AGAINST('Front Brake CarModel') ORDER BY score DESC;

Search in SQL where string starts with X

Well i currently want to do a search engine with SQL and PHP. I crrently use the following query:
SELECT * FROM info WHERE name LIKE '%$q%' LIMIT 10
But i want to select the info with 'name' that start with $q, not the ones that cointain $q.
Simply remove the first wildcard (%):
SELECT * FROM info WHERE name LIKE 'X%' LIMIT 10
If you are wanting to search fields that have multiple names and you want to search for a name that might be in the middle of the field, then it might be better to use Full Text Search (FTS). For example, if the name field in the OP refers to a full name and could contain "John Doe" and you want to search for "Doe", then FTS is probably going to be better (more accurate and faster) than using a LIKE operator. With FTS, the individual words in text are indexed and so searches can be very fast, plus it allows for more complex searches such as the ability to find two words (or names) in a field that are not adjacent (to pick one example at random).
The specific database vendor is not mentioned in the OP, but if FTS is supported, then it might be a good choice for what you are attempting. Some FTS information for SQL Server and for MySQL is easily found with a search.

How can I search for multiple terms in multiple table columns?

I have a table that lists people and all their contact info. I want for users to be able to perform an intelligent search on the table by simply typing in some stuff and getting back results where each term they entered matches at least one of the columns in the table. To start I have made a query like
SELECT * FROM contacts WHERE
firstname LIKE '%Bob%'
OR lastname LIKE '%Bob%'
OR phone LIKE '%Bob%' OR
...
But now I realize that that will completely fail on something as simple as 'Bob Jenkins' because it is not smart enough to search for the first an last name separately. What I need to do is split up the the search terms and search for them individually and then intersect the results from each term somehow. At least that seems like the solution to me. But what is the best way to go about it?
I have heard about fulltext and MATCH()...AGAINST() but that sounds like a rather fuzzy search and I don't know how much work it is to set up. I would like precise yes or no results with reasonable performance. The search needs to be done on about 20 columns by 120,000 rows. Hopefully users wouldn't type in more than two or three terms.
Oh sorry, I forgot to mention I am using MySQL (and PHP).
I just figured out fulltext search and it is a cool option to consider (is there a way to adjust how strict it is? LIMIT would just chop of the results regardless of how well it matched). But this requires a fulltext index and my website is using a view and you can't index a view right? So...
I would suggest using MATCH / AGAINST. Full-text searches are more advanced searches, more like Google's, less elementary.
It can match across multiple tables and rank them to how many matches they have.
Otherwise, if the word is there at all, esp. across multiple tables, you have no ranking. You can do ranking server-side, but that is going to take more programming/time.
Depending on what database you're using, the ability to do cross columns can become more or less difficult. You probably don't want to do 20 JOINs as that will be a very slow query.
There are also engines such as Sphinx and Lucene dedicated to do these types of searches.
BOOLEAN MODE
SELECT * FROM contacts WHERE
MATCH(firstname,lastname,email,webpage,country,city,street...)
AGAINST('+bob +jenkins' IN BOOLEAN MODE)
Boolean mode is very powerful. It might even fulfil all my needs. I will have to do some testing. By placing + in front of the search terms those terms become required. (The row must match 'bob' AND 'jenkins' instead of 'bob' OR 'jenkins'). This mode even works on non-indexed columns, and thus I can use it on a view although it will be slower (that is what I need to test). One final problem I had was that it wasn't matching partial search terms, so 'bob' wouldn't find 'bobby' for example. The usual % wildcard doesn't work, instead you use an asterisk *.

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