PHP search multiple fields issue - php

Question

I'm working through this tutorial online: http://goo.gl/qnk6U
The database table: ajax_search
Firstname | Lastname | Age | Hometown | Job
-------------------------------------------
Joe | Smith | 35 | Boulder | CIA
Steve | Apple | 36 | Denver | FBI
(Types are all varchar except age is an int.)
My question. Is the sql select statement below written correctly to query "Joe 35"? For some reason, I can only query "Joe" and it works, but not combining search terms.
$sql = "select * from ajax_search where FirstName like '%$rec%' or LastName like '%$rec%' or Age like '%$rec%' or Hometown like '%$rec%'";

Answer 1

Assuming your query is "Joe 35", then no. Your query matches any row where any of the four fields contains "Joe 35" (in a single field). To query for a user with name Joe and age 35, you'd need to split the search query and do something like:
WHERE Firstname LIKE "$firstname" AND Age LIKE "$age"

Answer 2

You need to split that sting from search query:
$columns = array("Firstname", "Lastname", "Age", "Hometown", "Job");
$string = ""; // acquire query string
$split = explode(" ", $string);
$search_words = array();
foreach ($split as $word) {
$search_words[] = $word;
}
Create query to search all over the fields:
$first = true;
$sql = "select * from ajax_search where";
foreach ($search_words as $word) {
foreach ($columns as $col) {
$sql .= (($first) ? " " : " OR") . "`$col` LIKE \"%" . $word . "%\"";
$first = false;
}
}
Then run this query.
Another and also a better solution would be more complicated word(tag) based indexing, because this can generate morbid queries when used with more words.