Its first time I am willing to add multiple search. I am not sure how it should be done. Should I use loop each word in search? or is there any mysql built in function there for it?
What I am thinking it should be like that?
$strSearch = $this->input->post("search"); // would hold words etc hello word
$arry = explode(" ", $strSearch);
foreach($arry as $item){
$this->db->query("select * from tbl where item like '%$item%');
}
Please advice.
Thank You
There is a lot to search.
Iterating through your words is only a small part of the battle. There is word order (Mac Office vs. Office Mac), ignoring common words (a, the), word variants like plurals. Don't forget weighing and scoring your searches.
Try a library that's already done the heavy lifting like Zend Search Lucene. See: http://codeigniter.com/forums/viewthread/207865/ or http://www.cmjackson.net/2009/02/17/how-to-use-zend_search_lucene-with-the-php-framework-codeigniter/.
How it worked
I split the words and looped through for each to make an extra string and I executed the string through mysql query. it was working how i wanted.
$strSearch = $this->input->post("search"); // would hold words etc hello word
$arry = explode(" ", $strSearch);
foreach($arry as $item){
$xQuery .= " or name like '%$item%' or location like '%item'";
}
$this->db->query("select * from tbl where name like '$strSearch' or location like '$strSearch' .$xQuery ");
You might look at MySQL natural language search.
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/fulltext-search.html
Related
Here's my use case: I'm searching for a person by first and last name, but only type in a partial first and partial last name, how can I create a WHERE clause that catches all possible scenarios?
Example, I type "Joe Smith" and it has a result. I type "Joe" and it has Joe Smith and a few other Joe's. I type "Joe Sm" and it gives me Joe Smith.
I want to be able to type "J Smit" and get Joe Smith, is that possible? Do I need to break the search term on spaces in PHP before doing a LIKE?
Here's what I have so far that works with full matches:
WHERE CONCAT_WS(' ', owner.first_name, owner.last_name)
LIKE '%". $searchTerm ."%'
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Why don't you do an explode(' ',$input) on your input in PHP and then compare all values of that array in your WHERE clause?
$inputArray = explode(' ',$input);
foreach ($inputArray as $part)
{
$whereArray = "CONCAT_WS(' ',owner.first_name,owner.last_name) LIKE '%$part%'";
}
$where = implode(' AND ',$whereArray);
And then use it like this:
$query = "SELECT * FROM owner WHERE $where";
Please pay attention to security, I didn't do that.
This still doesn't quite do what you want. Because when you want to search for "J Smit" you want the system to be intelligent enough, to search one part, say "J" in the first name column and the other part "Smit" in the last name column. Clearly that's more complex, and the complexity increases with the number of parts to match. There is a solution for that, but you won't like it, it's ugly.
Has anybody got a, not so ugly, solution to this?
It sounds like you do want split the search term into a first and last name component, and then run LIKE comparisons against owner.first_name and owner.last_name separately. Unfortunately, I don't know of native mySQL support for straightforward string splitting.
Splitting in PHP first is certainly an option (the answer from #KIKOSoftware seems to do a good job of that). If you want to try to do it all in mySQL as an alternative, this SO question offers some insight (you will have to modify for your use case, since you're delimiting on white space instead of commas):
How to split the name string in mysql?
I'm building a website that has records that need to be searched through. I just realized that the search function is too precise. It's a recipe website, so for example, if the user types "keylime pie", the recipe named "Key Lime Pie" won't show up in the results. I'm not sure if there's a script that I can get for this, but I'd really appreciate some help.
Here's my current query:
SELECT * FROM `recipes` WHERE
`recipe_title` LIKE '%$search%' // Key Lime Pie
OR `recipe_summary` LIKE '%$search%' // I love key lime pie
OR `recipe_categories` LIKE '%$search%' //desserts, pies
//... etc
Thanks!
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.
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).
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 '%$search%')
I have found it useful to add a related table where you add all the keywords pertaining to a specific entry.
So if the name of your recipe is "Key Lime Pie" you could have one of the keywords be "KeyLime Pie". That allows for typos by the user or allows you to add obvious related terms that people might look for.
This very simple problem could also be solved by adding a column in your recipes table where you store the name (or other short fields) without spaces (and maybe without punctuation). So for instance the name "Key Lime Pie" would be also stored as "KeyLimePie".
Now you can find the recipe by searching for the name "keylime pie": first remove the spaces (and maybe also the punctuation) from the search term. "keylime pie" becomes "keylimepie". That way your query will return the "Key Lime Pie" entry.
You can also expand your search by adding partial LIKE specifically for the beginning or the end of the searched term.
Assuming you store the title without spaces in a column called recipe_title_no_space
"SELECT * FROM recipes
WHERE
recipe_title_no_space LIKE '%".$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.
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.
I have two questions regarding my script and searching. I have this script:
$searchTerms = explode(' ', $varSearch);
$searchTermBits = array();
foreach($searchTerms as $term){
$term = trim($term);
if(!empty($term)){
$searchTermBits[] = "column1 LIKE '%".$term."%'";
}
}
$sql = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM table WHERE ".implode(' OR ', $searchTermBits)."");
I have a column1 with a data name "rock cheer climbing here"
If I type in "rock climb" this data shows. Thats perfect, but if I just type "Rocks", it doesn't show. Why is that?
Also, How would I add another "column2" for the keyword to search into?
Thank you!
Searching that string for "rocks" doesn't work, because the string "rocks" doesn't exist in the data. Looking at it, it makes sense to you, because you know that the plural of "rock" is "rocks", but the database doesn't know that.
One option you could try is removing the S from search terms, but you run into other issues with that - for example, the plural of "berry" is "berries", and if you remove the S, you'll be searching for "berrie" which doesn't get you any further.
You can add more search terms by adding more lines like
$searchTermBits[] = "column1 LIKE '%".$term."%'";
and replacing ".$term." with what you want to search for. For example,
$searchTermBits[] = "column1 LIKE '%climb%'";
One other thing to note... as written, your code is susceptible to SQL injection. Take this for example... What if the site visitor types in the search term '; DROP TABLE tablename; You've just had your data wiped out.
What you should do is modify your searchTermBits[] line to look like:
$searchTermBits[] = "column1 LIKE '%" . mysql_real_escape_string($term) . "%'";
That will prevent any nastiness from harming your data.
Assuming the data you gave is accurate, it shouldn't match because you're using "Rocks" and the word in the string is "rock". By default mysql doesn't do case sensitive matching, so it's probably not the case.
Also, to avoid sql injection, you absolutely should be using mysql_real_escape_string to escape your content.
Adding a second column would be pretty easy as well. Just add two entries to your array for every search term, one for column1 and one for column2.
Your column1 data rock cheer climbing here your search criteria %Rocks% it doesn't fit at all as rocks is not in your column1 data
you can add column2 as you do for column1 then put it all together by using an AND operator (column1 LIKE "%rock%" OR column1 LIKE "%climb%") AND (column2 LIKE "%rope%" OR column2 LIKE "%powder%")
TIPS:
If your table/schema are using xx_xx_ci collation (then this is mean case insensitive,mysql doesn't care case sensitive) but if other then you need to make sure that the search term must be case sensitive(mysql do case sensitive).
I'm trying to create a small search for my site. I've tried using full-text index search, but I could never get it to work. Here is what I've come up with:
if(isset($_GET['search'])) {
$search = str_replace('-', ' ', $_GET['search']);
$result = array();
$titles = mysql_query("SELECT title FROM Entries WHERE title LIKE '%$search%'");
while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($titles)) {
$result[] = $row['title'];
}
$tags = mysql_query("SELECT title FROM Entries WHERE tags LIKE '%$search%'");
while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($tags)) {
$result[] = $row['title'];
}
$text = mysql_query("SELECT title FROM Entries WHERE entry LIKE '%$search%'");
while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($text)) {
$result[] = $row['title'];
}
$result = array_unique($result);
}
So basically, it searches through all the titles, body-text, and tags of all the entries in the DB. This works decently well, but I'm just wondering how efficient would it be? This would only be for a small blog, too. Either way I'm just wondering if this could be made any more efficient.
There's no way to make LIKE '%pattern%' queries efficient. Once you get a nontrivial amount of data, using those wildcard queries performs hundreds or thousands of times slower than using a fulltext indexing solution.
You should look at the presentation I did for MySQL University:
http://www.slideshare.net/billkarwin/practical-full-text-search-with-my-sql
Here's how to get it to work:
First make sure your table uses the MyISAM storage engine. MySQL FULLTEXT indexes support only MyISAM tables. (edit 11/1/2012: MySQL 5.6 is introducing a FULLTEXT index type for InnoDB tables.)
ALTER TABLE Entries ENGINE=MyISAM;
Create a fulltext index.
CREATE FULLTEXT INDEX searchindex ON Entries(title, tags, entry);
Search it!
$search = mysql_real_escape_string($search);
$titles = mysql_query("SELECT title FROM Entries
WHERE MATCH(title, tags, entry) AGAINST('$search')");
while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($titles)) {
$result[] = $row['title'];
}
Note that the columns you name in the MATCH clause must be the same columns in the same order as those you declared in the fulltext index definition. Otherwise it won't work.
I've tried using full-text index search, but I could never get it to work... I'm just wondering if this could be made any more efficient.
This is exactly like saying, "I couldn't figure out how to use this chainsaw, so I decided to cut down this redwood tree with a pocketknife. How can I make that work as well as the chainsaw?"
Regarding your comment about searching for words that match more than 50% of the rows.
The MySQL manual says this:
Users who need to bypass the 50% limitation can use the boolean search mode; see Section 11.8.2, “Boolean Full-Text Searches”.
And this:
The 50% threshold for natural language
searches is determined by the
particular weighting scheme chosen. To
disable it, look for the following
line in storage/myisam/ftdefs.h:
#define GWS_IN_USE GWS_PROB
Change that line to this:
#define GWS_IN_USE GWS_FREQ
Then recompile MySQL. There is no need
to rebuild the indexes in this case.
Also, you might be searching for stopwords. These are words that are ignored by the fulltext search because they're too common. Words like "the" and so on. See http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/fulltext-stopwords.html
Using LIKE is NOT fulltext.
You need to use ... WHERE MATCH(column) AGAINST('the query') in order to access a fulltext search.
MySQL Full-text search works -- I would look into it and debug it rather than trying to do this. Doing 3 separate MySQL queries will not be anywhere near as efficient.
If you want to try to make that much efficient you could separate the LIKE statements in one query with OR between them.
I want to search like this: the user inputs e.g. "murrays", and the search result will show both records containing "murrays" and records containing "murray's". What should I do in my query.pl?
What do you think about using the SOUNDEX function and the SOUNDS LIKE operator ?
That way, you can simply do:
SELECT * from USERS WHERE name SOUNDS LIKE 'murrays'
I'm pretty sure it doesn't work for every case, and perhaps it is not the most efficient way to solve the problem, but it could fit your needs.
This won't help if you absolutely need to do these queries in SQL, but if you can set up a Lucene search index for it, you gain a lot of this kind of "fuzzy search" functionality. Note though that Lucene is quite a complex topic by itself.
What you could do is create an extra field in the database, which contains the data with all special characters stripped from it, and search there. A bit lame, I know. Looking forward to see smarter answers ;)
Quick and dirty:
SELECT * FROM myTable WHERE REPLACE(name, '\'', '') = 'murrays'
I would first build a search column which has the text without punctuation and then search on that. Otherwise you'll have have to have a series of regular expressions to search against or check individual records in PHP for matching: both of which are computational intensive operations.
Maybe something like this: (untested!)
SELECT * FROM users WHERE REPLACE(user_name, '\'', '') = "murrays"
If this is for single word searching, you could try using Soundex or Metaphone functions? These would handle sounds-like as well as spelling
Not sure if MySQL has these, but PHP does (which would require separate columns to hold these values).
Otherwise, Richy's no-punctuation extra column seems best.
You could try adding a replace to your query like this
replace(name, '''','')
to temporarily get rid of the apostrophes for the match.
select name from nametable where name = replace(name,'''','');
This query should be able to pick up "murrays" or "murray's".
var inputStr = "murrays";
inputStr = String.Replace("'", "\'", inputStr);
SELECT * FROM ATable WHERE Replace(AField, '\'', '') = inputStr OR AField = inputStr
strip user input and names in database from all non-letter characters.
Use levenstein distance or soundex to find murrays with murray or marrays. This is optional but your users would love that.