Question

I’d like implement a new search function into the CMS airpapr. Airpapr uses PDO to connect to the DB. Should I write the search function myself from the ground up, or are there some good open source search engines that can be used in a PHP/PDO DB setup? If it’s recomendable to write the search function myself, are there some good tutorials out there on how to write a search engine with PHP/PDO? The search function itself just has to search two different table rows.

Answer 1

Search is more than a function; it is more complex than simple string comparison + substring occurrence counting.

Taking into consideration matched term highlighting, stemming, synonym matching, the affect of stop words and the need for a search index separate to your content database, search is a broad problem best tackled by an existing search system.

A popular option is Apache Solr:

Its major features include powerful
full-text search, hit highlighting,
faceted search, dynamic clustering,
database integration, rich document
(e.g., Word, PDF) handling, and
geospatial search. Solr is highly
scalable, providing distributed search
and index replication, and it powers
the search and navigation features of
many of the world’s largest internet
sites.

There is a Solr library for PHP to get you started, not to mention a whole web full of Solr-related resources.