Question

First i like to thank for helping me create a really nice search result query.
I hope you friends can help me improve it.

here is the query

$searchresult = $mysql->query("SELECT * FROM pages WHERE PageContent LIKE '%$searchTerm%'");

if($searchresult->num_rows > 0) {

    while (($row = $searchresult->fetch_assoc()) !== null)
    {
        echo '<h3>' . $row["PageTitle"] . '</h1>';

        $position = strpos($row["PageContent"], $search);
        $snippet = substr($row["PageContent"], $position - 200, $position + 200);

        echo $snippet . '<hr><br />';  
    }

} else {
     echo "<p>Sorry, but we can not find an entry to match your query</p><br><br>"; 
}

What I like to do is to make the snippet trim in such a way that it do not break any word so that the sentence is readable …. and if possible to make the search term appear in bold.
Dear friends i need your help in doing so.
Thank you all in advance.

Answer 1

There’s a lot of room for improvement, but here’s an approach:

<?php

echo trimsnippet("Some really, really, really reaaally long text I don't really care about, at all.", "text", 30) . "\n";


function trimsnippet($text, $query, $max_length){
  $position = strpos($text, $query); 
  $snippet = substr($text, max($position - $max_length - 1, 0), strlen($query) + $max_length*2 + 1);
  echo "<$snippet>\n";
  preg_match("/[^\w](?P<pre>.*)".$query."(?P<post>.*)[^\w]/", $snippet, $extracted); 
  return $extracted["pre"]."<strong>".$query."</strong>".$extracted["post"];
}

Output:

really, really reaaally long text I don’t really care about,

How to use it:

Disregard the first line (echo…), it’s just a demo.
Place the function anywhere in the php that uses it, and then replace your lines:

    $position = strpos($row["PageContent"], $search);
    $snippet = substr($row["PageContent"], $position - 200, $position + 200)

with:

    $snippet = trimsnippet($row["PageContent"], $search, 200);

Some improvemets you could make to this function:

• check that $query really appears in the $text
• add an ellipsis (…) to the beginning or the end of the result
• control what happens when the $query is near the beginning and the end (and avoid adding the ellipsis in that case)
• sanitize the $query (and probably the $text also) so it cannot contain “regex syntax” that could mess with your regex pattern.