Question

I am doing a query for an autocomplete function on a mysql table that has many instances of similar titles, generally things like different years, such as ‘2010 Chevrolet Lumina’ or ‘Chevrolet Lumina 2009’, etc.

The query I am currently using is:

$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM products WHERE MATCH (name) AGAINST ('$mystring') LIMIT 10", $db);

The $mystring variable gets built as folows:

$queryString = addslashes($_REQUEST['queryString']);
if(strlen($queryString) > 0) {
  $array = explode(' ',  $queryString);
  foreach($array as $var){
    $ctr++;
    if($ctr == '1'){
      $mystring = '"' . $var . '"';
    }
    else {
      $mystring .= ' "' . $var . '"';
    }
  }
}

What I need to be able to do is somehow group things so only one version of a very similar actually shows in the autosuggest dropdown, leaving room for other products with chevrolet in them as well. Currently it is showing all 10 spots filled with the same product with different years, options, etc.

This one should give some of you brainiacs a good workout 🙂

Answer 1

I think the best way to do this would be to create a new field on the products table, something like classification. All the models would be entered with the same classification (e.g. “Chevrolet”). You could then still MATCH AGAINST name, but GROUP BY classification. Assuming you are using MySQL you can cheat a little and get away with selecting values and matching against values that you are not grouping by. Technically in SQL this gives undefined results and many SQL engines will not even let you try to do this, but MySQL lets you do it — and it returns a more-or-less random sample that matches. So, for example, if you did the above query, grouped by classification, only one model (picked pretty much at random) will show up in the auto-completer.