I have a table, with not many rows, and neither many columns. I am doing a Full text search on 3 columns.
My code is
$search_input = trim($_GET['s']);
$search = mysql_real_escape_string($search_input);
$search = '+'.str_replace(' ', '* +', $search).'*';
$sql = "SELECT * FROM table WHERE
MATCH(def, pqr, xyz) AGAINST ('$search' IN BOOLEAN MODE)";
$result = mysql_query($sql);
I can correctly search for terms like abcdefgh, which are present as ... abcdefgh ....
But I am receiving empty set with search terms like abc, where in table entry is present something like abc-123, and also terms like abcdefghs. (notice this is plural of above)
Clearly I need to implement partial search, or something like that.
But how do I implement such a search? Any better way to do a entire table search on user input?
Do mention anything I am doing incorrectly.
EDIT : By adding * after each word, now I am able to also search for abcde, but above problems remains.
Do you mean you don't get results for 3 letter combinations? If so, you might be hitting the mysql index length (which is usually set to 3)
More info here - http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/fulltext-fine-tuning.html
Related
I am using php and mySQL. I have a select query that is not working. My code is:
$bookquery = "SELECT * FROM my_books WHERE book_title = '$book' OR book_title_short = '$book' OR book_title_long = '$book' OR book_id = '$book'";
The code searches several title types and returns the desired reference most of the time, except when the name of the book starts with a numeral. Though rare, some of my book titles are in the form "2 Book". In such cases, the query only looks at the "2", assumes it is a "book_id" and returns the second entry in the database, instead of the entry for "2 Book". Something like "3 Book" returns the third entry and so forth. I am confused why the select is acting this way, but more importantly, I do not know how to fix it.
If you have a column in your table with a numeric data type (INT, maybe), then your search strategy is going to work strangely for values of $book that start with numbers. You have discovered this.
The following expression always returns true in SQL. It's not intuitive, but it's true.
99 = '99 Luftballon'
That's because, when you compare an integer to a string, MySQL implicitly does this:
CAST(stringvalue AS INT)
And, a cast of a string beginning with the text of an integer always returns the value of the integer. For example, the value of
CAST('99 Luftballon' AS INT)
is 99. So you'll get book id 99 if you look for that search term.
It's pointless to try to compare an INT column to a text string that doesn't start with an integer, because CAST('blah blah blah' AS INT) always returns zero. To make your search strategy work better, you should consider omitting OR book_id = '$book' from your search query unless you know that the entirety of $book is a number.
As others mention, my PHP allowed both numerical enties and text entries from the browser. My query was then having a hard time with this, interpreting some of my text entries as numbers by truncating the end. Thus, my "2 Book" was being interpreted as the number "2" and then being queried to find the second book in the database. To fix this I just created a simple if statement in PHP so that my queries only looked for text or numbers. Thus, in my case, my solution was:
if(is_numeric($book)){
$bookquery = "SELECT * FROM books WHERE book_id = '$book'";
}else{
$bookquery = "SELECT * FROM books WHERE book_title = '$book' OR book_title_short = '$book' OR book_title_long = '$book'";
}
This is working great and I am on my way coding happily again. Thanks #OllieJones and others for your questions and ideas which helped me see I needed to approach the problem differently.
Not sure if this is the correct answer for you but it seems like you are searching for only exact values in your select. Have you thought of trying a more generic search for your criteria? Such as...
$bookquery = "SELECT * FROM my_books WHERE book_title LIKE '".$book."' OR book_title_short LIKE '".$book."' OR book_title_long LIKE '".$book."' OR book_id LIKE '".$book."'"
If you are doing some kind of searching you might even want to ensure the characters before the search key are found as well like so....
$bookquery = "SELECT * FROM my_books WHERE book_title LIKE '%".$book."' OR book_title_short LIKE '%".$book."' OR book_title_long LIKE '%".$book."' OR book_id LIKE '%".$book."'"
The % is a special char that looks for allows you to search for the chars you want to search for PLUS any characters before this that aren't in the search criteri... for example $book = "any" with a % before hand in the query like so, '%".$book."'"`` would return bothcompanyand also the wordany` by itself.
If you need to you can add a % to the end also like so, `'%".$book."%'"`` and it would do the same for the beginning and end of the search key
I'm working for the first time with MATCH...AGAINST in php sql but there is one bothering me and I can't figure out how to fix it. This is my code:
SELECT * FROM m_artist WHERE match(artist_name) against('". $_POST['article_content'] ."' IN BOOLEAN MODE)
And this is $_POST['article_content']:
Wildstylez Brothers Yeah Frontliner Waveliner
Now my output should be: Wildstylez, Frontliner and Waveliner cause that's in my database. And I do but besides that I also get the Vodka Brothers, 2 Brothers of Hardstyle and more cause of the word brothers. How do I fix that SQL only selects the literal match?
Full-text search actually is a quite misleading name: you can search the full text by your query (like google does) but it won't guarantee you, that the full text equals your query.
So, according to documentation on Boolean Full-Text Searches your input Wildstylez Brothers Yeah Frontliner Waveliner is interpreted as artist_name contains (at least) one of Wildstylez, Brothers, Yeah, Frontliner and Waveliner as word. This is why you get e.g. the Vodka Brothers, which contains Brothers. For google-like purposes this is just what you want, as you want to get details on something you only know part of as in show me articles on music.
You probably want to use
artist_name LIKE '%name_part1%' OR artist_name LIKE '%name_part2%' ...
or
artist_name IN ('exact_name1', 'exact_name2', ...)
simpliest case would be doing something like
$names = explode(' ', $_POST['article_content']);
$name_searches = array_map(function($a) {return 'artist_name = \''.mysql_real_escape_string($a).'\'';}, $names);
$sql = "SELECT * FROM m_artist WHERE ".implode(" OR ", $name_searches);
but you would loose the ability to find 2 Brothers of Hardstyle as the name itself contains a space.
Another approach can be to prefix all words by '+' and stick to MATCH() AGAINST() and you will find only artists which include every word given.
Please provide more context if this is not what you are looking for.
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 am trying to have PHP search based on letters entered into a text box. I want it to match a pattern and find the relevant results from the database.
So if I typed in
"Jo Smi"
It would find results
Jo Smith, Pojo Smithson, Ojo Smith
How would one achieve this. I know how to get information from the database but not parts of various fields.
The objective is to search through users searching in fields user_firstname, user_lastname and user_email
Any ideas?
You should be able to do that directly from your query.
get the text box results and escape them then do
SELECT * FROM `database` WHERE `name` REGEXP '{INPUT TEXT HERE}';
That should work I think.
You can do simplistic searching on fields in a database using the LIKE clause:
$query = "SELECT Fields FROM Table WHERE TestField LIKE '%".$escapedTextString."%'";
Do a LIKE search against an upper-cased version of your search terms. Don't forget to mysql_real_escape_string().
$searchpattern = mysql_real_escape_string(strtoupper("Jo Smi"));
mysql_query("SELECT * FROM table WHERE UPPER(column) LIKE '%$searchpattern%';");
Hello Man previous answer is good
but you want to know this info
get the variable => $name =
$_GET['name'];
if you want to make it upper case
use strtoupper();
if you want to
make it Lower case use
strtolower();
if you want to
search you should replace = with
where like where name = $name to
where name like $name
this info
abc% => variable start with abc and finish with any thing
%abc% => variable start any thing , contain abc , finish with any thing
%abc => variable start any thing ,finish with abc
I'm working on an 'advanced search' page on a site where you would enter a keyword such as 'I like apples' and it can search the database using the following options:
Find : With all the words, With the
exact phrase , With at least one of
the words, Without the words
I can take care of the 'Exact phrase' by:
SELECT * FROM myTable WHERE field='$keyword';
'At least one of the words' by:
SELECT * FROM myTable WHERE field LIKE '%$keyword%';//Let me know if this is the wrong approach
But its the 'With at least one of the words' and 'Without the words' that I'm stuck on.
Any suggestions on how to implement these two?
Edit: Regarding 'At least one word' it wouldn't be a good approach to use explode() to break the keywords into words, and run a loop to add
(field='$keywords') OR ($field='$keywords) (OR)....
Because there are some other AND/OR clauses in the query also and I'm not aware of the maximum number of clauses there can be.
I would suggest the use of MySQL FullText Search using this with the Boolean Full-Text Searches functionality you should be able to get your desired result.
Edit:
Requested example based on your requested conditions ("Its just one field and they can pick either of the 4 options (i.e 1 word, exact words, at least 1 word, without the term).")
I am assuming you are using php based on your initial post
<?php
$choice = $_POST['choice'];
$query = $_POST['query'];
if ($choice == "oneWord") {
//Not 100% sure what you mean by one word but this is the simplest form
//This assumes $query = a single word
$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM table WHERE MATCH (field) AGAINST ('{$query}' IN BOOLEAN MODE)");
} elseif ($choice == "exactWords") {
$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM table WHERE MATCH (field) AGAINST ('\"{$query}\"' IN BOOLEAN MODE)");
} elseif ($choice == "atLeastOneWord") {
//The default with no operators if given multiple words will return rows that contains at least one of the words
$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM table WHERE MATCH (field) AGAINST ('{$query}' IN BOOLEAN MODE)");
} elseif ($choice == "withoutTheTerm") {
$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM table WHERE MATCH (field) AGAINST ('-{$query}' IN BOOLEAN MODE)");
}
?>
hope this helps for full use of the operators in boolean matches see Boolean Full-Text Searches
You could use
With at least one of the words
SELECT * FROM myTable WHERE field LIKE '%$keyword%'
or field LIKE '%$keyword2%'
or field LIKE '%$keyword3%';
Without the word
SELECT * FROM myTable WHERE field NOT LIKE '%$keyword%';
I'm not sure you could easily do those search options in a naive manner as the other two.
It would be worth your while implementing a better search engine if you need to support those scenarios. A simple one that could probably get you by is something along these lines:
When an item is added to the database, it is split up into the individual words. At this point "common" words (the, a, etc...) are removed (probably based on a common_words table). The remaining words are added to a words table if they are not already present. There is then a link made between the word entry and the item entry.
When searching, it is then a case of getting the word ids from the word table and the appropriate lookup of item ids in the joining table.
Search is notoriously difficult to do well.
You should Consider using a third party search engine using something like Lucene or Sphider.
Giraffe and Re0sless pooseted 2 good answers.
notes:
"SELECT * " sucks... only select the columns that you need.
Re0sless puts a "OR" between keywords.
- you should eliminate common words (" ","i","am","and"..etc)
- mysql has a 8kb i belive limit on the size of the query, so for really long SELECTS you should slipt it into separate queries.
- try to eliminate duplicate keywords (if i search for "you know you like it" the SELECT should basically only search for "you" once and elimnate common words as "it")
Also try to use "LIKE" and "MATCH LIKE" (see mysql man page) it could do wonders for "fuzzy" searches