Question

I am using a sql query such as WHERE name REGEXP '[[:<:]]something[[:>:]]'.

Now this all works great but my results are not ordered by number of matches found which is what I am looking for. Any ideas on how to go about doing this or if it is even possible?

Thanks

Full Query is

    SELECT `Item`.`id`, `Item`.`name`, `Item`.`short_bio`
    FROM `items` AS `Item`
    WHERE ((`Item`.`name` REGEXP '[[:<:]]hello[[:>:]]') OR
           (`Item`.`name` REGEXP '[[:<:]]world[[:>:]]')

Now this query is generated based on user input, each space breaks the thing into a different part that is searched for. I would like to order the results based on the number of matches of all parts, this way the most relevant results are on the top.

Answer 1

I found an UDF some time ago to do this. I’m really sorry I can’t cite the source though.

DELIMITER //

CREATE DEFINER=`root`@`localhost` FUNCTION `substrCount`(s VARCHAR(255), ss VARCHAR(255)) RETURNS tinyint(3) unsigned
    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 ;

There’s also a nifty solution found here.