Hi all.
I was wondering if any of you have experience with searching through a
database for user provided search terms.
I was hoping that maybe I could get some insight into how to better approach
what I am doing. Are there any great articles or example classes that I
could look at? Please let me know!
As of right now, my architecture is to have a primary class, Search, which
connects to the database, takes search terms, removes "junk words"and
suffixes ("s", "ing", etc.) (both defined by an array).
The class runs a query on each word for each field that the class is told to
search, and based on the "relevance" of that field (as supplied to the
class), points are awarded to returned items. If they come up again on
searches for other words, they get more points.
Using that base architecture, I then extend the class (e.g. class Faq
extends Search) and define "word groups" in the subclass. Word groups act to
broaden the search words in a thesarus like fashion (when the search term
"dvd" comes up, "movie", "title", "video", etc. are added to the SQL query
via OR). This way each subclass can define it's own set of word groups
applicable for that usage.
The problem I am having is that far too many irrelevant items are coming up.
"When is my package coming?" for example returns all kinds of junk because
"when" is everywhere in a Faq.
I am hoping that there is some internet resource that has a variety of
tricks and rules to throw into a search architecture, but I am also
interested to see if anyone can give me some of their personal experience
and expertise.
Thanks in advance!
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