Making a script serach a database

[markster]

i have a database of products and i want to search them by description depending on what a user puts into a text field. problem is i havent a clue how to do it. i figure it would need to split the search term into an array word by word, and then i run out of ideas. anyone got any ideas?

[DJMaze]

SELECT * FROM table WHERE field LIKE '%word%'

is an option

[waveclaw]

Originally Posted by markster

i have a database of products

What kinda of a database? A MySQL database? sqlite? Postgresql? Oracle? If you have a relational database then you can use DJMaze's SQL (Structured Query Language) statement. PHP has support for SQL to access a number of databases.

Otherwise, as with a flat-file, you can look up any number of search algorithms online.

Be careful with accepting input from a user to search any database. If you directly run the search with input from the user then they can inject extra SQL into your search. These extra commands can possibly run any SQL operation on your database that your PHP system can, including deleting the whole database. Some database utility libraries may offer to handle this for you, like prepared statements, or completely ignore it forcing you to write security code directly into your application.

[markster]

i need to accommodate multiple word searches, and possibly list by relativity.

[toe_cutter]

You will need to create a function that creates a SQL statement like DJMaze suggested.

I pre-populate an array with what I want to search for using the field name as the key and the value as the search value.

PHP Code:

$where = array("field1ID"=>34, "field2ID"=>2, "field3ID"=>65);

function whereClause( $where, &$query ) {
  $query .= " where ";
  $moreThenOne = false;
  foreach (array_keys($where) as $key) {
    if($moreThenOne)
      $query .= " and ";
    $query .= $key . " = \"" . $where[$key] . "\" ";
    $moreThenOne=true;
  }
}