Web Development Articles

Here we have a simple PHP search algorithm that queries a MySQL database and outputs the result. It is a simple alternative to using the FULLTEXT search feature of MySQL.

The script autmatically takes into consideration how many search words are in the search string which is submitted from the HTML search form. It then creates a MySQL query and executes it, displaying the results. You can easily edit the fields that the search script searches by changing the values in the $arrayFields array.

<?php
// checks if a search has been submitted
if(!empty($_REQUEST['search']))
{
  // the table to search
  $table = "yourTable";
  // explode search words into an array
  $arraySearch = explode(" ", $search);
  // table fields to search
  $arrayFields = array(0 => "title", 1 => "content");
  $countSearch = count($arraySearch);
  $a = 0;
  $b = 0;
  $query = "SELECT * FROM ".$table." WHERE (";
  $countFields = count($arrayFields);
  while ($a < $countFields)
  {
    while ($b < $countSearch)
    {
      $query = $query."$arrayFields[$a] LIKE '%$arraySearch[$b]%'";
      $b++;
      if ($b < $countSearch)
      {
        $query = $query." AND ";
      }
    }
    $b = 0;
    $a++;
    if ($a < $countFields)
    {
      $query = $query.") OR (";
    }
  }
  $query = $query.")";
  $query_result = mysql_query($query);
  // print title
  echo '<h1>Your Search Results</h1>'."\n\n";
  if(mysql_num_rows($query_result) < 1)
  {
    echo '<p>No matches found for "'.$search.'"</p>';
  }
  else
  {
    echo '<p>Search Results for "'.$search.'":</p>'."\n\n";
    // output list of articles
    while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($query_result))
    {
      // output whatever you want here for each search result
      echo '<a href="index.php?id='.$row['id'].'">'.$row['title'].'</a><br />';
    }
  }
}
else
{
  // display a welcome page
}
?>

<p><form method="get">
  <input type="text" name="search" value="<?php echo $_REQUEST['search'] ?>" />
  <input type="submit" value="Search" />
</form></p>

This PHP script produces and executes the following MySQL query when given a search input of "really cool php scripts". "title" and "content" are the two fields that are being searched upon. 

SELECT * FROM articles WHERE (title LIKE '%really%' AND title LIKE '%cool%' AND title LIKE '%php%' AND title LIKE '%scripts%') OR (content LIKE '%really%' AND content LIKE '%cool%' AND content LIKE '%php%' AND content LIKE '%scripts%')