Can't get MySQL fulltext search to work - mysql

Question

I have a table I want to bea ble to do fulltext searches on, but I can't seem to get any hits on my search terms.
Here's what my table looks like (I took out a few columns that I am confident are not important):
mysql> SHOW TABLE STATUS LIKE 'transcripts';
+-------------+--------+---------+------------+-------------------+----------+----------------+
| Name | Engine | Version | Row_format | Collation | Checksum | Create_options |
+-------------+--------+---------+------------+-------------------+----------+----------------+
| transcripts | MyISAM | 10 | Dynamic | latin1_swedish_ci | NULL | |
+-------------+--------+---------+------------+-------------------+----------+----------------+
mysql> DESCRIBE transcripts;
+-------------+----------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+-------------+----------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| id | int(11) | NO | PRI | NULL | auto_increment |
| content | text | YES | | NULL | |
| raw_content | text | YES | MUL | NULL | |
| tape_id | int(11) | YES | | NULL | |
| state | int(11) | YES | | 0 | |
| created_at | datetime | YES | | NULL | |
| updated_at | datetime | YES | | NULL | |
+-------------+----------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
mysql> SHOW INDEXES FROM transcripts;
+-------------+------------+-------------------+--------------+-------------+-----------+-------------+----------+--------+------+------------+
| Table | Non_unique | Key_name | Seq_in_index | Column_name | Collation | Cardinality | Sub_part | Packed | Null | Index_type |
+-------------+------------+-------------------+--------------+-------------+-----------+-------------+----------+--------+------+------------+
| transcripts | 0 | PRIMARY | 1 | id | A | 2 | NULL | NULL | | BTREE |
| transcripts | 1 | raw_content_index | 1 | raw_content | NULL | NULL | NULL | NULL | YES | FULLTEXT |
+-------------+------------+-------------------+--------------+-------------+-----------+-------------+----------+--------+------+------------+
Proof that there is a row to find:
mysql> SELECT id, raw_content FROM transcripts;
+----+-------------+
| id | raw_content |
+----+-------------+
| 1 | foo |
+----+-------------+
And here are my flailing attempts to get the search to work:
mysql> SELECT * FROM transcripts WHERE MATCH(raw_content) AGAINST ('foo');
Empty set (0.00 sec)
mysql> SELECT * FROM transcripts WHERE MATCH(raw_content) AGAINST ('foo' IN BOOLEAN MODE);
Empty set (0.00 sec)
mysql> SELECT id FROM transcripts WHERE MATCH(raw_content) AGAINST ('foo' IN NATURAL LANGUAGE MODE);
Empty set (0.00 sec)
mysql> SELECT * FROM transcripts WHERE MATCH(raw_content) AGAINST ('+foo*' IN BOOLEAN MODE);
Empty set (0.00 sec)
What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

by default fulltext ignores words with 3 or less characters
(now posted as an answer by request :) )

Answer 2

Here is something else to consider:
You can not only change the default length, but you can also change the stopword list. You may want to change the stop words because MySQL will not index this list of 543 words.
Try creating your own stopword list and changing the min word length.
Step 1) Create a stop word list of your own. You could add 'a','an', and 'the'.
echo "a" > /var/lib/mysql/custom_stopwords.txt
echo "an" >> /var/lib/mysql/custom_stopwords.txt
echo "the" >> /var/lib/mysql/custom_stopwords.txt
Step 2) Add these options to /etc/my.cnf
ft_min_word_len=2
ft_stopword_file=/var/lib/mysql/custom_stopwords.txt
Step 3) service mysql restart
Step 4) Create new FULLTEXT indexes. Any existing FULLTEXT indexes before restart of mysql should be reindexed.
Give it a Try !!!