Help creating search and results function for my site. Please help!

Report · Jan 07, 2013

Hi guys,

I'm making an eCommerce/PayPal website for some products I'm selling. The website is currently built with PHP and HTML.

I want to add a search box so people can search for what the specifically want - then the results page will display a list of the products with links to the products' individual pages.

From what I understand this will almost certainly need to be database driven. My only problem is that I barely know where to start.

I've created a database on my host and have created dummy pages of how I want everything to look.

Each product will need 3-5 search terms attached to them.

Can someone please tell me where to begin and how difficult what I want to achieve will be?

Thank you and I hope to hear from you.

SM

Report · Jan 07, 2013

The solution is database-driven only if the information about your products is in a database.

There are two approaches for a mySQL database, using the LIKE query and using MATCH AGAINST. These are SQL, not PHP, but the search results are processed by PHP.

There are plenty of tutorials on the web for these two methods. I prefer MATCH AGAINST, but it is a little bit more involved than LIKE.

Report · Jan 07, 2013

>From what I understand this will almost certainly need to be database driven.

>My only problem is that I barely know where to start.

The first step is to gather all of your requirements -write them all out- and then start to design a proper database model. How much experience do you have with database design?