query working with like statement but not with fulltext mysql index - php

Question

am trying to create a search engine to enable users data search. I tried using like in the sql query and it works. Now i want to use mysql fulltext index as in the code below but its not displaying any data when search. my table is created as myislam with fulltext index enabled. below is the code
<?php
include('searchajax_db.php');
if($_POST) {
$q=mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['search']);
$sql_res=mysql_query("select * from articles WHERE MATCH(title,body) AGAINST ('$q')
order BY MATCH(title,body) AGAINST ('$q')");
//$sql_res=mysql_query("select id,title,body from articles where title like '%$q%' or body like '%$q%' ");
//
if($sql_res === FALSE) {
die(mysql_error()); // TODO: better error handling
}
while($row=mysql_fetch_array($sql_res)) {
$ut=$row['title'];
$ub=$row['body'];
$b_ust=''.$q.'';
$b_emb=''.$q.'';
$final_u = str_ireplace($q, $b_ust, $ut);
$final_e = str_ireplace($q, $b_emb, $ub);
?>
<div class="show" align="left">
<?php echo '<a data-role="button" data-transition="fade" data-icon="arrow-r" data-iconpos="right" data-inline="true" href=profile.php?id='.htmlentities($row["id"], ENT_QUOTES, "UTF-8") .' title="Click to Find ">'.'<font color=orange></font>'.''
?>
<?php echo '<font color=greenyellow>' ?>
<span class="name"><?php echo htmlentities($final_u, ENT_QUOTES, "UTF-8"); ?></span> <br/>
<?php echo htmlentities($final_e, ENT_QUOTES, "UTF-8"); ?><br/>
<?php echo '</font>' ?>
</div>
<?php }} ?>

Answer 1

You don't need to use MATCH everywhere. The WHERE condition is where you determine which rows are retrieved from the table. Right after SELECT is where you choose which columns from those rows are displayed. ORDER BY determines which column and direction the rows are sorted by.
This example would probably be sufficient:
SELECT title, body FROM articles WHERE MATCH(title,body) AGAINST ('$q') ORDER BY title ASC
I also will note that you should use prepared statements with PDO or MySQLi as it is better protection than using mysql_real_escape_string.