I want to have a script so people can search for members in the database..

So they will be searching the field 'Username'...

I want it so if they seach for a name and it displays similar results...

So if they search R it will display all names begining with R...

So it would be something like...

Select * from Members Where Username is like '$Seacrh_value'

Anyone know the correct coding

Thanks

-James

I am at work right now so I can't get too detailed but I might later if you still need help but look into mysql's full text searching

You were really close with the example you had

try using:

"SELECT * FROM Members WHERE Username LIKE '$Search_value'"

you can also use '%' as a wildcard anywhere in the string. Wildcards are missing letters in the pattern. The server will accept any letter in place of '%'. So if you have 'R%' it would match anything that begins with a R. Let me know if you need anything else

Thanks

How would i set it so if the user searched Jo it would display all users who have Jo somewhere in their username like.. John, Joe, Joseph and AklJo??

Thanks

-James

Let's say;

$Search_value = "Jo";

Then you would do:

"SELECT * FROM Members WHERE Username LIKE
'%$Search_value%'"

When you place the '%' on either side of the search term it will match any character that is before and after it. As long as the search term is somewhere in the word then it will return result.

Thanks

-James

LIKE is easy to use and very tempting but you will get much more relevant results with full text searching. You can even order the results by the relevance in natural language.

Originally Posted by cptnwinky

LIKE is easy to use and very tempting but you will get much more relevant results with full text searching. You can even order the results by the relevance in natural language.

Got any examples or know any good tutorials?

Thanks

-James

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/Fulltext_Search.html

This should give you all the info you need to get started.

Note that MySQL 3.23.23 does not support fulltext searching, the minimum version is 4.0.1. (A lot of hosts still have not upgraded to MySQL 4, so beware if you plan on distributing your script.)

Chris, always the pecimist

Me a pessimist? Naw.

Thanks for the advice

-James