views:

50

answers:

4

assume that we are performing search using keywords: keyword1, keyword2, keyword3

there are records in database with column "name":

1: John Doe
2: Samuel Doe
3: John Smith
4: Anna Smith

now Query:

SELECT * FROM users WHERE (name LIKE "%John%" OR name LIKE "%Doe%")

it will select records: 1,2,3 (in this order) but i want to order it by keyword in example keyword1=John, keyword2=Doe so it should be listed by keywords: 1,3,2 (because i want to perform search for "Doe" after searching for "John")

I was thinking about SELECT DISTINCT FROM (...... UNION .....) but it will be much easier to order it somehow in another way (real query is really long)

are there any tricks to create such order?

+7  A: 
order by case 
    when name LIKE "%John%" then 1 
    when name LIKE "%Doe%"  then 2 
    else 3 
end
RedFilter
yes, that works, thank you:)
dfens
one more thing - if I understand it properly every LIKE will be executed 2 times in whole query?
dfens
@dfens: I am guessing that the `LIKE` in the `ORDER BY` clause will execute only on the data that was matched by the `WHERE` clause, so should be quicker.
RedFilter
+1  A: 

Read up on Boolean Fulltext Searches, with which you can do ordering.

fredley
A: 
 SELECT * 
 from
 (
  SELECT u.*, 1 OrderNum 
  FROM users 
  WHERE (name LIKE "%John%")
  UNION 
  SELECT u.*, 2 OrderNum 
  FROM users 
  WHERE (name LIKE "%Doe%")
  )
  Order by OrderNum
Michael Pakhantsov
A: 

To build on RedFilter's answer, you could make the rows that have both keywords to be at the top:

order by case 
when (name LIKE "%John%" and name LIKE "%Doe%") then 1 
when name LIKE "%John%" then 2
when name LIKE "%Doe%"  then 3
end
Juan Tarquino