Question

I have a problem with SQL Server 2008 full text search I have the following query

SELECT *
FROM cigars
WHERE CONTAINS(cigars.*, @Search )

@Search is a value that is passed in through a stored procedure. But, thats not the problem.

What is is if someone searches for say ‘Punch’ it works fine and I get all cigars that match.

Where the problem lays is if they search for ‘Punch Cigar’ I get this error.

Syntax error near ‘Cigar’ in the full-text search condition ‘Punch Cigar’.

Any idea on how I can get it to allow for it to search for that phrase?

Answer 1

Why are you searching by all columns in the CIGAR table? Surely some of them do not use a string/text based data type…

After looking at the CONTAINS documentation, I’d look at a function to properly escape the words for the FTS searching:

CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[escapeFTSSearch] (
  @SearchParameter NVARCHAR(MAX)
)
RETURNS NVARCHAR(MAX)
AS
BEGIN
  -- Declare the return variable here
  DECLARE @result NVARCHAR(MAX)

  SELECT @result = '"'+ REPLACE(REPLACE(@SearchParameter,'"',''), ' ', '" AND "') +'"'

  -- Return the result of the function
  RETURN @result

END

Test:

SELECT [example].[dbo].[escapeFTSSearch] ('Punch Cigar')

…which gives me:

"Punch" AND "Cigar"

Usage:

WHERE CONTAINS(cigars.*, dbo.escapeFTSSearch(@Search) )

Addendum

The function is simplistic:

• it assumes you want all words provided
• doesn’t support fuzzy searching
• assumes double quotes aren’t in the parameter value

Tweak as needed.