Question

I have a site up and the search feature was very basic and always has done what it needs to do.
I now want to incorperate a value from another table into the search which gets a bit tricky.

I want to return a complete set of results from one query, but the new info only relates (via id) the the data in the other table which I want to return.

I currently have

SELECT      *
FROM        [TABLE]
WHERE       ( LOWER(title) LIKE '%$search%'
              OR LOWER(contents) LIKE '%$search%'
            )
            AND type = 'product'

in the other table there is a col called id (same as the other which are related) and another meta_value.

I want to not only do the operation above but also search the meta_value data, if a match get the results from the other table (using the id).

If any one understands what I am saying and it is possible then I would be muchly appreciated if you could push me in the right direction.

Answer 1

You can join the two tables using their IDs using the LEFT JOIN command. You can then filter on columns in either table.

SELECT *
FROM [TABLE] t1
LEFT JOIN otherTable t2 on t1.ID=t2.ID
WHERE
  (
    LOWER(t1.title) LIKE '%$search%' 
    OR LOWER(t1.contents) LIKE '%$search%'
    OR LOWER(t2.meta_value) LIKE '%$search%'
  )
  AND t1.type = 'product'