I have a database table that looks a bit like this:
id|words|url
1|+Word +Matching -Goodbye|/url-1
2|+Redirect +Me|/url-2
3|+Goodbye +Word|/url-3
When a user types a search for: "Hello I am matching a word", I would like the table.words field to be given a 'relevance' score against that string, a lot like the MATCH() AGAINST() function, but with the parameters reversed.
Effectively, the query I am looking to run would be along the lines of:
SELECT id, words, url,
MATCH ("Hello I am matching a word") AGAINST (words IN BOOLEAN MODE) AS relevance
FROM table
ORDER BY relevance DESC
But this does not work, unfortunately. I could do something in PHP where I create a function to loop through each inclusive/exclusive word, but I fear that this will be really slow when the table size grows.
Just to tie it up, I would expect the query to return id: 1 in that instance, as it includes "Word" and 'Matching", and does not include "Goodbye". I should point out that these words could be in any order within the string, so I couldn't really use LIKE, I don't think.
If such a function does not exist, is there a better way I could approach this?
Thanks!
The documentation is pretty clear:
The search string must be a string value that is constant during query
evaluation. This rules out, for example, a table column because that
can differ for each row.
Hence, you cannot do what you want with a query.
You can use dynamic SQL. Or a loop in PHP to loop through the patterns in your table.
Related
I am working on a search function, where the matches are weighted based on certain conditions. One of the conditions I want to add weight to is matches where the character length of the query string in a LIKE match is longer than 4.
This is what I want to the query to look like, roughly. %s is meant to represent the actual match found by LIKE, but I don't think it does. I'm wondering if there is a special variable in MySQL that does represent the precise character match found by LIKE.
SELECT help.*,
IF(CHAR_LENGTH(%s) > 4, 2, 0) w
FROM help
WHERE (
(title LIKE '%this%' OR title LIKE '%testy%' OR title LIKE '%test%') OR
(content LIKE '%this%' OR content LIKE '%testy%' OR content LIKE '%test%')
) LIMIT 1000
edit: I could in the PHP split the search string array into two arrays based on the character length of the elements, with two separate queries that return different values for 'w', then combine the results, but I'd rather not do that, as it seems to me that would be awkward, messy, and slow.
Check out FULLTEXT as another way to discover rows. It will be faster, but won't address your question.
This probably has the effect you want.
SELECT ....
IF ( (title LIKE '%testy%' OR
content LIKE '%testy%'), 2, 0)
....
Note that the "match" in your LIKEs includes the %, so it is the entire length of the string. I don't think that is what you wanted.
REGEXP "(this|testy|that)" will match either 4 or 5 characters (in this example). It may be possible to do something with REGEXP_REPLACE to replace that with the empty string, then see how much it shrank.
I think the answer to my question is that what I wanted to do isn't possible. There is no special variable in MySQL representing the core character match in a WHERE condtional where LIKE is the operator. The match is the contents of the returned data row.
What I did to reach my objective was took the original dynamic list of search tokens, iterated through that list, and performed a search on each token, with the SQL tailored to the conditions that matched each token.
As I did this I built an array of the search results, using the id for the database row as the index for the array. This allowed me to perform calculations with the array elements, while avoiding duplicates.
I'm not posting the PHP code because the original question was about the SQL.
Is it possible to match against words that begin or end with the searchstring?
Example:
I want to find a column that contains the word "pineapple". I want to find that row by searching for "pine" or just "apple" if that's possible.
Can this be done?
Current code, if it helps:
SELECT id
FROM movies
WHERE MATCH (movies.movie_title)
AGAINST ('+word1 +word2' IN BOOLEAN MODE)
For your example:
select 'pineapple' regexp 'pine|apple';
For the more general case if you can use a prepared statement you can put whatever you want for the regexp string when the query is built. If there are multiple things to match against you could build a complex expression, or subselect against the results and loop, or self join. There are lots of ways to approach this.
I have the following query :
SELECT * FROM `user`
WHERE MATCH (user_login) AGAINST ('supriya*' IN BOOLEAN MODE)
Which outputs all the records starting with 'supriya'.
Now I want something that will find all the records ending with e.g. 'abc'.
I know that * cannot be preappended and it doesn't work either and I have searched a lot but couldn't find anything regarding this.
If I give query the string priya ..it should return all records ending with priya.
How do I do this?
Match doesn't work with starting wildcards, so matching with *abc* won't work. You will have to use LIKE to achieve this:
SELECT * FROM user WHERE user_login LIKE '%abc';
This will be very slow however.
If you really need to match for the ending of the string, and you have to do this often while the performance is killing you, a solution would be to create a separate column in which you reverse the strings, so you got:
user_login user_login_rev
xyzabc cbazyx
Then, instead of looking for '%abc', you can look for 'cba%' which is much faster if the column is indexed. And you can again use MATCH if you like to search for 'cba*'. You will just have to reverse the search string as well.
I believe the selection of FULL-TEXT Searching isn't relevant here. If you are interested in searching some fields based on wildcards like:
%word% ( word anywhere in the string)
word% ( starting with word)
%word ( ending with word)
best option is to use LIKE clause as GolezTrol has mentioned.
However, if you are interested in advanced/text based searching, FULL-TEXT search is the option.
Limitations with LIKE:
There are some limitations with this clause. Let suppose you use something like '%good' (anything ending with good). It may return irrelevant results like goods, goody.
So make sure you understand what you are doing and what is required.
I am trying to follow: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/4.1/en/fulltext-natural-language.html
in an attempt to improve search queries, both in speed and the ability to order by score.
However when using this SQL ("skitt" is used as a search term just so I can try match Skittles).
SELECT
id,name,description,price,image,
MATCH (name,description)
AGAINST ('skitt')
AS score
FROM
products
WHERE
MATCH (name,description)
AGAINST ('skitt')
it returns 0 results. I am trying to find out why, I think I might have set my index's up wrong I'm not sure, this is the first time I've strayed away from LIKE!
Here is my table structure and data:
Thank you!
By default certain words are excluded from the search. These are called stopwords. "a" is an example of a stopword. You could test your query by using a word that is not a stopword, or you can disable stopwords:
How can I write full search index query which will not consider any stopwords?
If you want to also match prefixes use the truncation operator in boolean mode:
*
The asterisk serves as the truncation (or wildcard) operator. Unlike the other operators, it should be appended to the word to be affected. Words match if they begin with the word preceding the * operator.
I'm trying to use wildcards to pass a stem of a word as part of a full text search in MySql. I would prefer to use match...against for the performance benefit instead of a like query.
I found this post which makes it sound as though this can be done:
MySQL fulltext with stems
...but I can't get it to work for me.
My data looks like this:
table name: "rxnorm_brands"
step_medname bn_name
Amoxicillin Wymox
Amoxicillin-Clavulanate Augmentin
This query works but uses "like":
select `step_medname`, `bn_name`
from `rxnorm_brands`
where (`bn_name` like 'Amox%' or `step_medname` like 'Amox%');
I want to use this query, but it returns nothing:
select `step_medname`, `bn_name`
from `rxnorm_brands`
where MATCH (`bn_name`, `step_medname`) AGAINST ('Amox*');
I do have a fulltext index on bn_name and step_medname. What am I doing wrong? Or can this not be done?
This can be done using IN BOOLEAN MODE, see: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/fulltext-boolean.html.
So your query would become:
select `step_medname`, `bn_name`
from `rxnorm_brands`
where MATCH (`bn_name`, `step_medname`) AGAINST ('Amox*' IN BOOLEAN MODE);
but note that with the BOOLEAN MODE matching, rows either match or they don't - the results can no longer be ordered by relevance like they can with normal FULLTEXT searches.
The RxNorm API now has a method that will do matching of text that only approximately matches the RxNorm concept. See http://rxnav.nlm.nih.gov/RxNormAPI.html#label:23