The End Result
Put the script together and it will look something like this:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 | <?php /***************************** * Simple SQL Search Tutorial by Frost * of Slunked.com ******************************/ $dbHost = 'localhost'; // localhost will be used in most cases // set these to your mysql database username and password. $dbUser = 'searchuser'; $dbPass = 'searchpass'; $dbDatabase = 'searchdb'; // the database you put the table into. $con = mysql_connect($dbHost, $dbUser, $dbPass) or trigger_error("Failed to connect to MySQL Server. Error: " . mysql_error()); mysql_select_db($dbDatabase) or trigger_error("Failed to connect to database {$dbDatabase}. Error: " . mysql_error()); // Set up our error check and result check array $error = array(); $results = array(); // First check if a form was submitted. // Since this is a search we will use $_GET if (isset($_GET['search'])) { $searchTerms = trim($_GET['search']); $searchTerms = strip_tags($searchTerms); // remove any html/javascript. if (strlen($searchTerms) < 3) { $error[] = "Search terms must be longer than 3 characters."; }else { $searchTermDB = mysql_real_escape_string($searchTerms); // prevent sql injection. } // If there are no errors, lets get the search going. if (count($error) < 1) { $searchSQL = "SELECT sid, sbody, stitle, sdescription FROM simple_search WHERE "; // grab the search types. $types = array(); $types[] = isset($_GET['body'])?"`sbody` LIKE '%{$searchTermDB}%'":''; $types[] = isset($_GET['title'])?"`stitle` LIKE '%{$searchTermDB}%'":''; $types[] = isset($_GET['desc'])?"`sdescription` LIKE '%{$searchTermDB}%'":''; $types = array_filter($types, "removeEmpty"); // removes any item that was empty (not checked) if (count($types) < 1) $types[] = "`sbody` LIKE '%{$searchTermDB}%'"; // use the body as a default search if none are checked $andOr = isset($_GET['matchall'])?'AND':'OR'; $searchSQL .= implode(" {$andOr} ", $types) . " ORDER BY `stitle`"; // order by title. $searchResult = mysql_query($searchSQL) or trigger_error("There was an error.<br/>" . mysql_error() . "<br />SQL Was: {$searchSQL}"); if (mysql_num_rows($searchResult) < 1) { $error[] = "The search term provided {$searchTerms} yielded no results."; }else { $results = array(); // the result array $i = 1; while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($searchResult)) { $results[] = "{$i}: {$row['stitle']}<br />{$row['sdescription']}<br />{$row['sbody']}<br /><br />"; $i++; } } } } function removeEmpty($var) { return (!empty($var)); } ?> <html> <title>My Simple Search Form</title> <style type="text/css"> #error { color: red; } </style> <body> <?php echo (count($error) > 0)?"The following had errors:<br /><span id=\"error\">" . implode("<br />", $error) . "</span><br /><br />":""; ?> <form method="GET" action="<?php echo $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'];?>" name="searchForm"> Search For: <input type="text" name="search" value="<?php echo isset($searchTerms)?htmlspecialchars($searchTerms):''; ?>" /><br /> Search In:<br /> Body: <input type="checkbox" name="body" value="on" <?php echo isset($_GET['body'])?"checked":''; ?> /> | Title: <input type="checkbox" name="title" value="on" <?php echo isset($_GET['title'])?"checked":''; ?> /> | Description: <input type="checkbox" name="desc" value="on" <?php echo isset($_GET['desc'])?"checked":''; ?> /><br /> Match All Selected Fields? <input type="checkbox" name="matchall" value="on" <?php echo isset($_GET['matchall'])?"checked":''; ?><br /><br /> <input type="submit" name="submit" value="Search!" /> </form> <?php echo (count($results) > 0)?"Your search term: {$searchTerms} returned:<br /><br />" . implode("", $results):""; ?> </body> </html> |
And now we run the script and see the search results work their magic! Enjoy.

Hi I’m building a magazine database for my work and found this tutorial really helpful, is there any way you could add pagination to it and only show a few records at a time.
Hi there.
Thanks a lot for your effective search engine. I appreciate your hard work. I was wondering if you could tell me how i would hyper link the title, display only a portion of the contents and then click and follow link for more details of the content to a separate page. Just like google style please?
Thanks,