Question

I’ve got a query that takes an input searches for the closet match in zipcode/region/city/metrocode in a location table containing a few tens of thousands of entries (should be nearly every city in the US). The query I’m using is:

select
  metrocode,
  region,
  postalcode,
  region_full,
  city
from
  dv_location
where
(
  region ilike '%Chicago%'
 or
  postalcode ilike '%Chicago%'
 or
  city ilike '%Chicago%'
 or
  region_full ilike'%Chicago%'
)

 and metrocode is not null

Odd thing is, the results set I’m getting back looks like this:

metrocode;region;postalcode;region_full;city
862;CA;95712;California;Chicago Park
862;CA;95712;California;Chicago Park
602;IL;60611;Illinois;Chicago
602;IL;60610;Illinois;Chicago

What am I doing wrong? My thinking is that Chicago would have greater weight than Chicago Park since Chicago is an exact match to the term (even though I’m asking for a wildcard match on the term).

Answer 1

Try this:

select
  metrocode,
  region,
  postalcode,
  region_full,
  city,
  (region = 'Chicago'
   OR postalcode = 'Chicago'
   OR city = 'Chicago'
   OR region_full = 'Chicago') AS full_match
from
  dv_location
where
(
  region ilike '%Chicago%'
 or
  postalcode ilike '%Chicago%'
 or
  city ilike '%Chicago%'
 or
  region_full ilike'%Chicago%'
)
 and metrocode is not null
 order by full_match desc;