Question

I have a database of 30k elements, each game names.

I’m currently using:

SELECT * from gamelist WHERE name LIKE '%%%$search%%%' OR aliases LIKE '%$search%' LIMIT 10"

for the searchbar.
However, it can get really picky about things like:

'Animal Crossing: Wild World' 

See, many users won’t know that ‘:’ is in that phrase, so when they start searching:

 Animal Crossing Wild World 

It won’t show up.

How can I have the sql be more forgiving?

Answer 1

Replace the non alphanumeric characters in the search parameter with wildcards so Animal Crossing Wild World becomes %Animal%Crossing%Wild%World% and filter on that.