Code Examples -> How to build a search query for any N number of words in a search string

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PHP Code Examples

Title :	How to build a search query for any N number of words in a search string
Categories :	PHP, Regexps, Search Engines, Search	Kelvin Poon
Date :	Mar 14th 2003
Grade :	4 of 5 (graded 1 times)
Viewed :	8208
File :	No file for this code example.
Images :	No Images for this code example.

Search :	More code by Kelvin Poon
Action :	Grade This Code Example
Tools :	My Examples List

Code

the Problem:

I am making a search engine and I would have the user to type a sentence to search for. Let's say
it is stored in $search. My search engine will bring up a result If and only if ALL of the words
in $search exist in the result. For example if

$search = Vax Useful Commands

Then the result is only true if

<?
(eregi(".*Vax.*Useful.*Commands.*", 'possible result'))
?>

is true

Now, I don't know how many words there are in $search initially. How do I do a search like that?
I mean if I know $search is 3 words then I can do

<?
$words = preg_split("/ /", $search);

if (eregi(".*words[0].*words[1].*words[2].*", 'possible result')) {
.....
}
?>

Even if I know how many words there are, every time the number of words in $search can be different.
another note is that my data is taken from a database.

The Solution:

If you have used explode() you can do a loop that goes through the array, for instance

<?
$searchwords=explode(' ', $search);

for ($x=0;$x<count($searchwords);$x++){
//build the search command OR build the query
// i recommend to make it a query, so:

$WHERE.= ' AND textfield=LIKE '"%'.$searchwords[$x].'%"';
}

//now cut off the first ' AND '
$WHERE=substr($WHERE,4,strlen($WHERE));

//now finish the query
$query="SELECT title,text,ID FROM tablename ".$WHERE;
?>

then proceed by doing the query and showing the results.

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User Comments

	Jasp Jones wrote : 908 not sure of the php internals but would it be better to get the count before the for loop to save re-evaluating the count on each loop? also a nice way to get around chopping the first `AND` off is to put `WHERE 1 = 1` \|\| $ANDS cheers Jasp
	Roberto Schiabel wrote :917 `what if your search must apply more than one field. do you use a nested-cicle to build a sql statement to mach all the words in every field ? thanks (sorry for my english)`