Question

I have a barebones search system that just got more complicated and there are many weird issues going on with it. How can I rewrite this search query to be more accurate and efficient

The tbl_notes table only has the id of the course but to add it to the search I used a inner query to check it too. There are alot of issues with this and I’m not too strong in mysql any help would be appreciated.

TBL_NOTES:

[id][user_id][note_title][note_title][topic][course][note]

TBL_COURSES:

  [id][user_id][course_name]

   SELECT * FROM `tbl_notes` 
    WHERE `active` = '0' 
    AND `valid_note` = '0' 
    AND `user_id` = '33' 
    AND `note` LIKE '%biology%' 
    OR `topic` LIKE '%biology%' 
    OR `note_title` LIKE '%biology%' 
    OR `course` IN (SELECT `id` FROM tbl_courses WHERE `course_name` LIKE '%biology%' AND user_id = '33') 
    ORDER BY id DESC LIMIT 0, 6

Thanks

Answer 1

I would write it like this:

SELECT
  DISTINCT n.*
FROM
  `tbl_notes` n left join `tbl_courses` c
  on n.course = c.id
WHERE
  n.`user_id` = '33'
  AND n.`active` = '0' 
  AND n.`valid_note` = '0'
  AND (n.`note` LIKE '%biology%' 
       OR n.`topic` LIKE '%biology%' 
       OR n.`note_title` LIKE '%biology%' 
       OR c.`course_name` LIKE '%biology%') 
ORDER BY n.id DESC LIMIT 0, 6