Question

I want to make a product search engine where the user types in a product code and it will bring back the result, this is easy.

But, I want to be able to compensate for numbers that look like letters and vice versa.

E.g a user types 6O12l, but the product code is actually 60121.

What do I need to put in the SQL query to bring back all products with 6O12l and/or 60121?

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So far I have this which isn’t working, it keeps bringing back the same result everytime no matter what I type in:

$searchString = $_POST['query'] ;
$searchString = preg_replace('#\W#', '', $searchString);

$firstLetter = substr($searchString, 0, 1) ;

include("db.php") ;

$result = $dbh->prepare("SELECT productCode
                     FROM products
                     WHERE productCodeREGEXP '6[O0]12[1l]'
                     AND productCode LIKE '$firstLetter%'") ;
$result->execute() ;

while($row = $result->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC)) {
echo $row['productCode'].'<br />' ;
}

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I have managed to get it working, but I have encountered a new problem.

I’m using str_replace to substitute the letters for numbers and viceversa in the users query string, but it will only work for one or the other, not both:

$qString = str_replace(array('o', 'l', '0', '1'), array('[O0]', '[1l]', '[O0]', '[1l]'), $searchString) ;

Which gives me a mangled output of e.g. A[[1l]l]BC
Instead of A[1l]BC

Answer 1

Do you have product codes with letters? You can translate the query string to all numbers before you run the query. That’s the easiest thing to do, and will be much faster than testing for both.