Mysql - Help me alter this search query involving multiple joins and conditions to get the desired results

Question

About the system:

• We are following tags based search.

• Tutors create packs - tag relations for tutors stored in tutors_tag_relations and those for packs stored in learning_packs_tag_relations. All tags are stored in tags table.

• The system has 6 tables - tutors, Users (linked to tutor_details), learning_packs, learning_packs_tag_relations, tutors_tag_relations and tags.

Please run the following fresh queries to setup the system:

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS learning_packs_tag_relations ( id_tag int(10) unsigned NOT NULL DEFAULT '0', id_tutor int(10) DEFAULT NULL, id_lp int(10) unsigned DEFAULT NULL, KEY Learning_Packs_Tag_Relations_FKIndex1 (id_tag), KEY id_lp (id_lp), KEY id_tag (id_tag) ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS learning_packs ( id_lp int(10) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, id_status int(10) unsigned NOT NULL DEFAULT '2', id_author int(10) unsigned NOT NULL DEFAULT '0', name varchar(255) NOT NULL DEFAULT '', PRIMARY KEY (id_lp) ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 AUTO_INCREMENT=21 ;

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS tutors_tag_relations ( id_tag int(10) unsigned NOT NULL DEFAULT '0', id_tutor int(10) DEFAULT NULL,

KEY Tutors_Tag_Relations (id_tag), KEY id_tutor (id_tutor), KEY id_tag (id_tag) ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS users ( id_user int(10) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, name varchar(100) NOT NULL DEFAULT '', surname varchar(155) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',

PRIMARY KEY (id_user)

) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 AUTO_INCREMENT=52 ;

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS tutor_details ( id_tutor int(10) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, id_user int(10) NOT NULL, PRIMARY KEY (id_tutor) ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=60 ;

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS tags ( id_tag int(10) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, tag varchar(255) DEFAULT NULL, PRIMARY KEY (id_tag), UNIQUE KEY tag (tag) ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=5 ;

ALTER TABLE learning_packs_tag_relations ADD CONSTRAINT Learning_Packs_Tag_Relations_ibfk_1 FOREIGN KEY (id_tag) REFERENCES tags (id_tag) ON DELETE NO ACTION ON UPDATE NO ACTION;

ALTER TABLE learning_packs

ADD CONSTRAINT Learning_Packs_ibfk_2 FOREIGN KEY (id_author) REFERENCES users (id_user) ON DELETE NO ACTION ON UPDATE NO ACTION;

ALTER TABLE tutors_tag_relations ADD CONSTRAINT Tutors_Tag_Relations_ibfk_1 FOREIGN KEY (id_tag) REFERENCES tags (id_tag) ON DELETE NO ACTION ON UPDATE NO ACTION;

INSERT INTO test.users ( id_user , name , surname ) VALUES ( NULL , 'Vivian', 'Richards' ), ( NULL , 'Sachin', 'Tendulkar' );

INSERT INTO test.users ( id_user , name , surname ) VALUES ( NULL , 'Don', 'Bradman' );

INSERT INTO test.tutor_details ( id_tutor , id_user ) VALUES ( NULL , '52' ), ( NULL , '53' );

INSERT INTO test.tutor_details ( id_tutor , id_user ) VALUES ( NULL , '54' );

INSERT INTO test.tags ( id_tag , tag ) VALUES ( 1 , 'Vivian' ), ( 2 , 'Richards' );

INSERT INTO test.tags (id_tag, tag) VALUES (3, 'Sachin'), (4, 'Tendulkar'); INSERT INTO test.tags (id_tag, tag) VALUES (5, 'Don'), (6, 'Bradman');

INSERT INTO test.learning_packs (id_lp, id_status, id_author, name) VALUES ('1', '1', '52', 'Cricket 1'), ('2', '2', '52', 'Cricket 2');

INSERT INTO test.tags (id_tag, tag) VALUES ('7', 'Cricket'), ('8', '1'); INSERT INTO test.tags (id_tag, tag) VALUES ('9', '2');

INSERT INTO test.learning_packs_tag_relations (id_tag, id_tutor, id_lp) VALUES ('7', '52', '1'), ('8', '52', '1'); INSERT INTO test.learning_packs_tag_relations (id_tag, id_tutor, id_lp) VALUES ('7', '52', '2'), ('9', '52', '2');

Tutor Vivian Richards has created two Learning_packs - "Cricket 1" (active) and "Cricket 2" (inactive).

Requirement:

Now I want to search learning_packs, with AND logic on the search keywords. Help me modify the following query so that searching with any combination of these terms - pack name or tutor's name, surname results all active packs (either directly those packs or packs created by those tutors).

================================================================================== 1. Searching "Vivian Richards"

select lp.*

from Learning_Packs AS lp

LEFT JOIN Learning_Packs_Tag_Relations AS lptagrels ON lp.id_lp = lptagrels.id_lp

LEFT JOIN Tutors_Tag_Relations as ttagrels ON lp.id_author = ttagrels.id_tutor LEFT JOIN Tutor_Details AS td ON ttagrels.id_tutor = td.id_tutor LEFT JOIN Users as u on td.id_user = u.id_user

JOIN Tags as t on (t.id_tag = lptagrels.id_tag) or (t.id_tag = ttagrels.id_tag)

where lp.id_status = 1 AND ( t.tag LIKE "%Vivian%" OR t.tag LIKE "%Richards%" )
group by lp.id_lp HAVING count(lp.id_lp) > 1 limit 0,20

2. Searching "Cricket 1"

select lp.*

from Learning_Packs AS lp

LEFT JOIN Learning_Packs_Tag_Relations AS lptagrels ON lp.id_lp = lptagrels.id_lp

LEFT JOIN Tutors_Tag_Relations as ttagrels ON lp.id_author = ttagrels.id_tutor LEFT JOIN Tutor_Details AS td ON ttagrels.id_tutor = td.id_tutor LEFT JOIN Users as u on td.id_user = u.id_user

JOIN Tags as t on (t.id_tag = lptagrels.id_tag) or (t.id_tag = ttagrels.id_tag)

where lp.id_status = 1 AND ( t.tag LIKE "%Cricket%" OR t.tag LIKE "%1%" ) group by lp.id_lp HAVING count(lp.id_lp) > 1 limit 0,20

As you can see, searching "Cricket 1" returns that pack, but searching Vivian Richards does not return the same pack.

Answer 1

The reason the first query (Searching "Vivian Richards") returns no records is because of the join:

LEFT JOIN Tutor_Details AS td ON ttagrels.id_tutor = td.id_tutor

If you look, ttagrels (which is learning_packs_tag_relations), id_tutor contains:

id_tutor   
52
52
52
52

Whereas td (which is tutor_details) contains:

id_tutor
60
61
62

Because of this, no join can be made; none of the values in these two columns match.

Some opinion/commentary:

Looking through the tables it seems there are a lot of redundancies. For example, if a tutor, author, and user are all the same thing, and their details are in the users table, then all tables that refer to a tutor, author or user should link to users.id_user. The learning_packs_tag_relations table doesn't need an id_tutor column if it is linking packs to tags. It just needs pack_id and tag_id. This is because the pack, which is in learning_packs already links to the users table by way of the id_author column.

The tutor_details table is the one that may dispel my theory, because it appears to link tutors to users (making a distinction I did not extrapolate elsewhere), however the id_tutor values do not appear to be linked to anything.

Perhaps some database redesign is needed here; good luck.