SQL WHERE LIKE, multipe statements

[mythix]

I'm in need of guidance from the masters of SQL the ancient japaneese art of body manipulation .

I'm trying to create a search engine, currently it all works nicely, kinda. The problem is it only searches one field in my database when i want it to search in two.

In the database there is a table that is called tblArticles, two of the fields are name, and description. currently it searches the description field but not the name decription. How do I make it search the name field as well?

current SQL:

$sql = "SELECT * FROM tblArticles WHERE description LIKE '%" . $HTTP_GET_VARS["strg"] . "%'";

where $HTTP_GET_VARS["strg"] is the string that I'm searching for.

Also, think i'm going out of my depth here. Of the string is made up of several words is it possible to split the words up and therefore search for them in any order???

[r937]

to search in multiple columns, you need multiple WHERE conditions

i guess the big question is whether you want ANDs or ORs

select something
  from tblArticles
 where name like '%foo%'
   and description like '%bar%'

if you want several words as parameters, you could string them all together with wildcards

  where description like '%foo%bar%qux%'

but then of course you'd get a match only if all three words were included in that order

to search for them in any order, you'd want

  where description like '%foo%bar%qux%'
    and description like '%foo%bar%qux%'
    and description like '%foo%bar%qux%'

but here again, because of the ANDs, you'd get a match only if all three words were included

helps?

[mythix]

Thanks, was great help

[r937]

doh! sorry

in my haste
to cut and paste
i screwed up

to search for them in any order, you'd want

where description like '%foo%bar%qux%'
  and description like '%foo%bar%qux%'
  and description like '%foo%bar%qux%'

should be

where description like '%foo%'
  and description like '%bar%'
  and description like '%qux%'

hopefully you figured that out

[mythix]

grins