Improving my PHP search of a MySQL database? - php

Question

I'm building a website that has records that need to be searched through. I just realized that the search function is too precise. It's a recipe website, so for example, if the user types "keylime pie", the recipe named "Key Lime Pie" won't show up in the results. I'm not sure if there's a script that I can get for this, but I'd really appreciate some help.
Here's my current query:
SELECT * FROM `recipes` WHERE
`recipe_title` LIKE '%$search%' // Key Lime Pie
OR `recipe_summary` LIKE '%$search%' // I love key lime pie
OR `recipe_categories` LIKE '%$search%' //desserts, pies
//... etc
Thanks!

Answer 1

Like queries will soon take down your MySQL database.
If it's not too complicated for you, use Sphinx for searching on mysql it will give you nice results based on keyword density and keyword weight etc. And it's really really fast.

Answer 2

Your best bet may be to look into full text searching. MySQL only supports full text search in MyISAM by default, but if you're running MySQL 5.6 or later, you can do it in InnoDB, at well.
Alternatively, you can run dedicated full text search tools such as Lucene or Sphinx. These are more sophisticated tools that include things like relevance ranking, and may even be able to handle spelling differences/errors (depending on the tool).

Answer 3

Not sure about those double quotes, try this:
SELECT * FROM `recipes` WHERE (`recipe_title` LIKE '%$search%'
OR `recipe_summary` LIKE '%$search%'
OR `recipe_categories` LIKE '%$search%')

Answer 4

I have found it useful to add a related table where you add all the keywords pertaining to a specific entry.
So if the name of your recipe is "Key Lime Pie" you could have one of the keywords be "KeyLime Pie". That allows for typos by the user or allows you to add obvious related terms that people might look for.
This very simple problem could also be solved by adding a column in your recipes table where you store the name (or other short fields) without spaces (and maybe without punctuation). So for instance the name "Key Lime Pie" would be also stored as "KeyLimePie".
Now you can find the recipe by searching for the name "keylime pie": first remove the spaces (and maybe also the punctuation) from the search term. "keylime pie" becomes "keylimepie". That way your query will return the "Key Lime Pie" entry.
You can also expand your search by adding partial LIKE specifically for the beginning or the end of the searched term.
Assuming you store the title without spaces in a column called recipe_title_no_space
"SELECT * FROM recipes
WHERE
recipe_title_no_space LIKE '%".$search."'
OR
recipe_title_no_space LIKE '".$search."%'"
That way you will fin a match for "keylime" and also for "pie keylime". Be careful that this does not return too many/poor results in some cases.

Answer 5

There are a few ways of customising search results as stated above, but if you wanted to experiment...
$searchArray = explode(' ', $search);
$idArray = array();
for($i=0; $i<count($searchArray) $i++) {
$query = "SELECT * FROM table WHERE recipe_title LIKE '%$search%'
AND recipe_summary LIKE '%$search%' AND recipe_categories LIKE '%$search%'";
$result = mysqli_query($link, $query);
$row = mysqli_fetch_array($result);
$idArray = array_merge($idArray, $row['id']);
}
$mostMatches = array_count_values($idArray);
foreach($mostMatches as $key => $value) {
if($value > 1) {$popularResultId[] = $key;}
}
for($i=0; $i<count($popularResultId)$i++) {
mysqli_data_seek($result, $popularResultId[$i]);
$row = mysqli_fetch_array($result);
echo "Title: {$row['recipe_title']}\n\r";
echo "Summary: {$row['recipe_summary']}\r\n";
echo "category: {$row['recipe_categories']}\r\n";
}
If my theory is correct you should be able to tune the results by changing the "if($value > 1)" up or down, you could even have it auto adjust depending on how big your database got if you wanted.