Dynamic mysql search when Fulltext is not a viable solution - php

Question

Many articles will point you to Fulltext indexing for a simple solution to mysql searches. This very well may be the case under the right circumstances, but I've yet to see a solution that comes close to Fulltext when Fulltext cannot be used (for instance, across tables). The solution I'm looking for would preferably be one that can match anything in the sentence.
So, searching James Woods or searching Woods James, might both return the same row where the text James Woods exists. Basic search methods would render "mix-matching" of search words useless.
The likely answers are replacing Fulltext with REGEXP or LIKE. Then replacing the 'whitespace' in the search term with | or % so James Woods might become James|Woods, so any combination of James and Woods will return results. Or become '%James%Woods%', which will be less productive, but still will return matches that aren't necessarily exact.
Example SQL
SELECT * FROM people
LEFT JOIN
(SELECT GROUP_CONCAT(other_data) AS people_data GROUP BY people_id)
AS t2 ON(t2.people_id = people.id)
WHERE CONCAT_WS(' ', people.firstname, people.lastname, people_data) LIKE {$query}
Is this really the best way? Are there any tricks to making this method (or another method) work more efficiently? I'm really looking for a mysql solution, so if your answer is to use another DB service, well, so be it and I'll accept that as an answer, but the real question is the best solution for mysql. Thanks.

Answer 1

In MySQL have you tried using
combination of MATCH() and AGAINST() functions
they will yield the result that you are looking I guess.
e.g.
for following set of data ::
mysql> select * from temp;
+----+---------------------------------------------+
| id | string |
+----+---------------------------------------------+
| 1 | James Wood is the matyr. |
| 2 | Wood James is the saviour. |
| 3 | James thames are rhyming words. |
| 4 | Wood is a natural product. |
| 5 | Don't you worry child - Swedish House Mafia |
+----+---------------------------------------------+
5 rows in set (0.00 sec)
this query would return following results, if you require either james or wood to be present
mysql> select string from temp where match (string) against ('james wood' in bo
olean mode);
+---------------------------------+
| string |
+---------------------------------+
| James Wood is the matyr. |
| Wood James is the saviour. |
| James thames are rhyming words. |
| Wood is a natural product. |
+---------------------------------+
4 rows in set (0.00 sec)
if you require that James and Wood both words should be present than this query would work. note the '+' sign before the words. check this Boolean mode
mysql> select string from temp where match (string) against ('+james +wood' in b
oolean mode);
+----------------------------+
| string |
+----------------------------+
| James Wood is the matyr. |
| Wood James is the saviour. |
+----------------------------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)
to find a word with any suffix it works in similar way
mysql> select string from temp where match (string) against ('Jame*' in boolean
mode);
+---------------------------------+
| string |
+---------------------------------+
| James Wood is the matyr. |
| Wood James is the saviour. |
| James thames are rhyming words. |
+---------------------------------+
3 rows in set (0.02 sec)
but note that prefix searches are not yet supported in fulltext searches by Mysql
mysql> select string from temp where match (string) against ('*ame*' in boolean
mode);
Empty set (0.00 sec)
I hope this helps.
On a kind note, this reply is very late but was interested enough for me to reply.
to learn more check this link http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en//fulltext-search.html

Answer 2

I'm a bit late to the party - so apologies for that.
You mentioned that you cannot use fulltext functionality because you're using joins - well, although that is kind of the case, there is a popular way to get around this.
Consider the following for using fulltext search with joins:
SELECT
article.articleID,
article.title,
topic.title
FROM articles AS article
-----
INNER JOIN (
SELECT articleID
FROM articles
WHERE MATCH (title, keywords) AGAINST ("cat" IN BOOLEAN MODE)
ORDER BY postDate DESC
LIMIT 0, 30
) AS ftResults ON article.articleID = ftResults.articleID
-----
LEFT JOIN topics AS topic ON article.topicID = topic.topicID
GROUP BY article.id
ORDER BY article.postDate DESC
Notice how I managed to keep my topics join intact by running my fulltext search in another query and joining/matching the results by ID.
If you're not on shared hosting, also consider using Sphinx or Lucene Solr alongside MySQL for extra fast fulltext searches. I've used Sphinx and highly recommend it.