Question

Here is an example to explain what I need:

I have 3 tables:

 contact: { id, invoices, name } // a contact can have several invoices
 invoice: { id, contact, lines, comment } // an invoice can have several lines but only one contact
 line: { id, invoice, designation } // a line can have only one invoice

If a user search an invoice, a want to query the comment, designation and name fields and getting only the invoice that match.

So I’ve done this:

SELECT 
  invoice.id AS id, 
  invoice.contact AS contact, 
  invoice.comment AS comment, 
FROM invoice 
  LEFT JOIN contact ON invoice.contact = contact.id 
  LEFT JOIN line ON line.invoice = invoice.id
WHERE (
  contact.name LIKE '%SEARCH_TERM%' OR 
  invoice.comment LIKE '%SEARCH_TERM%' OR 
  line.designation LIKE '%SEARCH_TERM%'
)

This work except that if an invoice has several lines which match the search term, I will get several times the same invoice.

So my question is: is there a way to get only once an invoice even if the search term is find in several related records ?

Also, is there a way to get only the fields of the invoice without using ALIAS (I don’t care about the tables contact and line except for the search) ?

If you know a better way to do that, I’d love to hear it.

Answer 1

SELECT 
  DISTINCT invoice.*
FROM invoice 
  LEFT JOIN contact ON invoice.contact = contact.id 
  LEFT JOIN line ON line.invoice = invoice.id
WHERE (
  contact.name LIKE '%SEARCH_TERM%' OR 
  invoice.comment LIKE '%SEARCH_TERM%' OR 
  line.designation LIKE '%SEARCH_TERM%'
)