Comments on: MySQL/PHP Boolean Search Updated

By: Joe Dolson

Joe Dolson — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 15:15:50 +0000

The reason i have to do it is because to limit the db growth i have a location db with country and in the properies field i add just the location ID instead of the name…

Which is very sensible! Glad that everything worked for you — I’ve never tested the script using joins in the query, but I couldn’t think of any reason it would be a problem.

By: Alen

Alen — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 07:27:05 +0000

hi,
I have to confess that i was a bit border yesterday, but today with a cup of cafe i did what i asked you.
What i did was: in config.php i added an additional field for db_table, and
on Search.php i just changed a bit the select string:
AS relevance FROM $db_table LEFT JOIN $db_table2 on properties.location=locations.id WHERE…

The reason i have to do it is because to limit the db growth i have a location db with country and in the properies field i add just the location ID instead of the name…

So i wanted that the country name should be searched too..

Thanks for your great job!

By: Joe Dolson

Joe Dolson — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 23:46:35 +0000

That shouldn’t be any problem — the script is written based on a single table model mostly because I can’t possibly guess any other reasonable database design…adding some options to configure this kind of thing is in the plans, but hasn’t happened yet.

Hard to wrap your head around how to plan for who-knows-how-many different possible database designs.

Regardless, as long as you’re creating a valid database query and the resulting fields are defined consistently with your configuration file, you shouldn’t have any problems. You might end up with some complications concerning which fields on which tables you’re searching, of course — it’s entirely likely you’ll end up needing to toss the configuration variable and hard code the queries. Depends on what you need.

By: Alen

Alen — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 13:12:55 +0000

hi!

i need to do left join on my tables do do a search..
is it a problem to change your script?

$q = “select properties.id, properties.title, properties.city, locations.name FROM properties LEFT JOIN locations on properties.location=locations.id ” .
“WHERE title LIKE ’%”.$keywords[$i].”%’”.

By: Joe Dolson

Joe Dolson — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 20:42:39 +0000

Well…simultaneous comment authorship!

Thanks for stopping by, Chiara! It was one of those checklists which just spurred me to actually implement what I should have done the first time around.

By: Joe Dolson

Joe Dolson — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 20:40:58 +0000

In fact, I was aware of that (courtesy of this article) — I just chose to use the “revised” version anyhow. I rather like the total absurdity of the extremism in the expanded poem. Your original version, however, does take the cake for elegance — the longer version becomes very difficult to scan due to the differences of meter and slant-wise homonyms.

Thanks for stopping by!

By: Chiara Fox

Chiara Fox — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 20:38:54 +0000

I’m so glad that you found the checklist helpful. I hope you find that your script is more usable now.

And that is a great poem on the dangers of spell checkers. Ha!

By: Mark Eckman

Mark Eckman — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 19:07:48 +0000

Actually, those first two stanzas are not the original, and I’d be happy to explain the origins of the verse.

In 1992, I worked for AT&T and at the time we were proud of our proprietary e-mail. However, a debate raged over including or not including a spell check in the software. Lot’s of arguments were forwarded on the topic ranging from “customers that can’t spell shouldn’t use e-mail” to limitations for computers with 64k of RAM. The argument spilled over into the daily e-mail blurb sent to everyone. I sent these two verses, which were published the next day, ending the discussion. My intention was to subtly lower the arguments to absurdity :

I have a spelling checker
It came with my PC
It highlights for my review
Mistakes I cannot sea.

I ran this poem thru it
I’m sure your pleased to no
Its letter perfect in it’s weigh
My checker told me sew.

A couple of years later I was doing a presentation on search engines and so began an urban ledgend.

Mark Eckman