Question

Lets say a user has a search form where he searches for properties. Lets say he selects:

Location : ABC
Price Range : 1 million - 5 millions
No. of Bedrooms Range : 5 - 12
State : XYZ
County : PQR
Category: MNO

There is a very slim chance of matching all the fields he selected to yield result from the database. so using AND in WHERE condition doesn’t seem effective here. what I want is –

1. If all selection matched then no problem show the result
2. If location, price range, state matched then show the result as well
3. if location, no of bedrooms, category, state matched then show the result as well
4. and so on….if any of the combination match then show the result

Answer 1

How about filtering the table for records that match on any search term and sorting the results in descending order of the number of matching terms:

SELECT   *,
         (Location = 'ABC')
       + (Price BETWEEN 1000000 AND 5000000)
       + (Bedrooms BETWEEN 5 AND 12)
       + (State = 'XYZ')
       + (County = 'PQR')
       + (Category = 'MNO')
           AS relevance
FROM     my_table
WHERE    (Location = 'ABC')
      OR (Price BETWEEN 1000000 AND 5000000)
      OR (Bedrooms BETWEEN 5 AND 12)
      OR (State = 'XYZ')
      OR (County = 'PQR')
      OR (Category = 'MNO')
HAVING   relevance >= ?   -- specify the minimum number of matching terms here
ORDER BY relevance DESC
LIMIT    ?                -- specify the maximum number of matching records here