Add possibility to search via 'LIKE'

[ste101]

With match against it is not possible to search with leading wildcard. Also ft_min_word_len is mostly set to 4 which isn't acceptable for everything.

I made a quick and dirty hack and it is working well:

         // add boolean where clause for searchwords
         if ($this->pObj->wordsAgainst != '') {
-            $where .= ' AND MATCH (' . $this->getMatchColumns() . ') AGAINST (';
-            $where .= $wordsAgainstQuoted . ' IN BOOLEAN MODE) ';
+            //$where .= ' AND MATCH (' . $this->getMatchColumns() . ') AGAINST (';
+            //$where .= $wordsAgainstQuoted . ' IN BOOLEAN MODE) ';
+            foreach($this->pObj->swords AS $sword) {
+                $where .= " AND content LIKE " . $databaseConnection->quote("%" . $sword . "%", \PDO::PARAM_STR);
+            }
         }

[christianbltr]

Using LIKE instead of MATCH AGAINST has some major drawbacks, e.g. you will lose relevancy ranking, the possibility to use modifiers ("+", "-") and it is less performant in bigger indexes.

Also for the disadvantages of using MATCH AGAINST which you mentioned there are already solutions (which are not always possbile to use, I admit):

• In order to search for words shorter than 4 characters you can lower the value in ft_min_word_len(if you have access to the MySQL configuration)
• In order to use in-word-search ("leading wildcard") you can use ke_search_premium (if the project budget allows it)

There might be some use cases for switching to LIKE but I doubt that it would get much use when it would be implemented as a general feature. So for now I'm closing this.