I had the opportunity to do a simple search algorithm for my work. We have a fairly small database of text based certifications which need to be searched. If someone were to search for “radeon ati” it should show all of the certifications that match that string in any way.

Our database is MySQL, and PHP is the frontend, so you can find the respective MySQL functions at http://www.mysql.com and the PHP functions at http://www.php.net/.

If someone inserted into the form “radeon ati”, I would get that text and run it through this function:

function split_spaces($in){
    $tmp = explode(" ", $in);
    $tmp = implode("%' AND N.CardName LIKE '%", $tmp);
    return $tmp;
}


Then calling that function inside of my query:

...
AND ( N.CardName LIKE '%".$this->strip_spaces($q)."%' )
...


leading to the final result becoming something similar to

...
AND ( N.CardName LIKE '%radeon%' AND N.CardName LIKE '%ati%' )
...


This leads to a much more efficient search “engine” than simply feeding in the entire string inside the LIKE ‘%%’ clause.