Question

I have a table in a database with a structure like this
Keywords

• id int(11)
• U_id int(11)
• keywords text
• create_date int(11)

U_id is a foreign key, id is the primary key

The keywords field is a list of words created by users separated by commas
I was wondering if someone could suggest an efficient query to search such a table.

Answer 1

If you using MyISAM, you can create a fulltext index on field keywords. Then search using:

select * from keywords k where match('test') against(k.keywords);

Of course CSV in a database is just about the worst thing you can do. You should put keywords in a separate table. Make sure to use InnoDB for all tables.

Table tags
-------------
id integer auto_increment primary key
keyword_id integer foreign key references keywords(id)
keyword varchar(40)

Now you can select using:

SELECT k.* FROM keywords k
INNER JOIN tags t ON (t.keyword_id = k.id)
WHERE t.keyword LIKE 'test' //case insensitive comparison.

Much much faster than CSV.