Search mysql database using php

Question

I want to implement a powerful search engine for my ecommerce application. im using php and mysql as database. Can anyone guide me how to proceed? Is the FULL TEXT feature of MYSQL good for a large volume of data? Thanks!

Answer 1

IMHO, the MySQL Full text engine is a really poor choice.

Firstly, the number of parameters to tweak the search is almost 0.

Secondly, from my experiencem it doesn't scale.

You might consider using

• Sphinx
• Lucene

Lucene is said to be the industry standard project. They have solr if you want to have a separate architecture.

They are far more advanced and perform better.

Answer 2

This should get you started, however you will have to modify or expand on the idea.

For the second part of your question, have a look at:

Pros & Cons of Full Text Search

Answer 3

Recently, for an app handling a huge amount of data, we have given up both MySQL FULL TEXT and Lucene to switch on PostgreSQL which has a much more powerful native FULL TEXT engine. At least, it was what the results of our investigations said.

Answer 4

Take a look at the Zend_Lucene from Zend_Framework and a new feature for mysql full text search here