Question

How to query to get count of matching words in a field, specifically in MySQL. simply i need to get how many times a ‘search terms’appear in the field value.

for example, the value is ‘one two one onetwo’ so when i search for word ‘one’ it should give me 3

is it possible? because currently i just extract the value out of database and do the counting with server side language.

Thank you

Answer 1

You could create a function to be used directly within SQL, in order to do it all in one step.

Here is a function which I found on the MySQL website :

delimiter || DROP FUNCTION IF EXISTS substrCount|| CREATE FUNCTION substrCount(s VARCHAR(255), ss VARCHAR(255)) RETURNS TINYINT(3) UNSIGNED LANGUAGE SQL NOT DETERMINISTIC READS SQL DATA BEGIN DECLARE count TINYINT(3) UNSIGNED; DECLARE offset TINYINT(3) UNSIGNED; DECLARE CONTINUE HANDLER FOR SQLSTATE '02000' SET s = NULL;  SET count = 0; SET offset = 1;  REPEAT IF NOT ISNULL(s) AND offset > 0 THEN SET offset = LOCATE(ss, s, offset); IF offset > 0 THEN SET count = count + 1; SET offset = offset + 1; END IF; END IF; UNTIL ISNULL(s) OR offset = 0 END REPEAT;  RETURN count; END;  ||  delimiter ; 

You should use it like this :

SELECT substrCount('one two one onetwo', 'one') `count`; // Returns 3