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I have a Wordpress Woocommerce web site. When i'm searching the greek version of my web site, the tags, categories, product names, description etc. that are in greek, the search is not working very well because of words that have characters with tone (like ά, έ, ή, ί, ό etc.)

Is any method to replace or match the characters with tone with characters without tone (ά with α, έ with ε, ή with η etc.). I prefer matching than replacing but if it not possible, let just replace them.

I have this code from another non wordpress website witch is replacing the tone characters with non tone charachters

$s = $_GET["s"];

if (isset($s)) {

$sql = mysqli_query($con, "SELECT * FROM table WHERE word LIKE '%$s%' ORDER BY word");

while($RS = mysqli_fetch_array($sql)) {

$result = str_replace("ά","α",$RS['prword']);
$result = str_replace("έ","ε",$result);
$result = str_replace("ή","η",$result);
$result = str_replace("ί","ι",$result);
$result = str_replace("ό","ο",$result);
$result = str_replace("ύ","υ",$result);
$result = str_replace("ώ","ω",$result);
echo $result;

}

}

But i don't know how to use it with wordpress php hooks.

Kyriakos13
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  • The code you have shown there only replaces characters in the results, _after_ they were found in the database. Not sure what actual problem that would be supposed to solve. Can you please clarify what exactly _your_ issue is here - that a piece of content that contains `ά` is not found, when the user searches for just `a`? – CBroe Mar 31 '23 at 08:41
  • i have products tags, descriptions etc in greek language. Many words have greek characters with tone. But when a user is typing in the search field a word without tone characters, the search is not working as well as in english. when a product tag is for example ```φώτα``` but user is typing ```φωτα```, then the search is not finding any product. – Kyriakos13 Mar 31 '23 at 08:52
  • If changing the collation of the query doesn't work, then I guess you can only manipulate the query itself, and _expand_ a search for `a` to include `OR LIKE '%ά%'` etc. You'd need to know all possible tone characters to match to a "normal" one upfront then. WordPress offers a variety of hooks to manipulate the query, or even the raw SQL generated. – CBroe Mar 31 '23 at 09:04
  • **Warning:** You are wide open to [SQL Injections](https://php.net/manual/en/security.database.sql-injection.php) and should use parameterized **prepared statements** instead of manually building your queries. They are provided by [PDO](https://php.net/manual/pdo.prepared-statements.php) or by [MySQLi](https://php.net/manual/mysqli.quickstart.prepared-statements.php). Never trust any kind of input! Even when your queries are executed only by trusted users, [you are still in risk of corrupting your data](http://bobby-tables.com/). [Escaping is not enough!](https://stackoverflow.com/q/32391315) – Dharman Mar 31 '23 at 14:57

1 Answers1

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If you want to included search result with "α" while user search by "ά" you need to change your SQL collate to SQL_Latin1_General_CP1253_CI_AI. This should return all rows where the column value contains 'α'. For example:

SELECT * FROM table WHERE column LIKE '%ά%' COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1253_CI_AI

If you can't change your collate, you can use REPLACE function like this:

SELECT * FROM table WHERE REPLACE(column, 'ά', 'α') LIKE '%ά%'

But you cannot use REPLACE if your column has LONGTEXT type. In this case you need to convert column to VARCHAR using CAST. For example:

SELECT * FROM table WHERE REPLACE(CAST(column AS VARCHAR(MAX)), '%ά%', '%α%') LIKE '%ά%'
Oliwer Lisek
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  • i can't change the collation of my database but also i can't replace all the texts in products tags, description etc because i want the text to be displayed grammatically right. I want to replace only the query for the search results. I don't want to change anything in my database. – Kyriakos13 Mar 31 '23 at 08:57
  • Not sure if that collation would actually work in a WP environment, which uses utf8mb4_unicode_ci by default, I suspect this might get an "illegal mix of collations" error. – CBroe Mar 31 '23 at 08:57
  • _"If you can't change your collate, you can use REPLACE function like this"_ - that would replace in the _found_ results, but not solve the issue that a search for `α` does not find the records that actually contain `ά`. – CBroe Mar 31 '23 at 08:58
  • @Kyriakos13 _"i can't change the collation of my database"_ - that is not what that does; it changes the collation that is used for comparison in that particular query only. But as I said, I would imagine that this will probably not work here (give it a try nevertheless, cause I am not sure), I suspect this might get you an illegal mix of collations error. – CBroe Mar 31 '23 at 09:01
  • @Kyriakos13 So, why you not movie the replace to WHERE cause? It shouldn't change anything in query results. `SELECT * FROM table WHERE REPLACE(column, 'ά', 'α') LIKE '%ά%'` – Oliwer Lisek Mar 31 '23 at 09:05
  • i want to use the replace of the search query in functions.php file. so i need to use a function with a hook. right? – Kyriakos13 Mar 31 '23 at 09:34
  • Try to use `posts_where` hook. For example: `$where .= " AND REPLACE({$wpdb->posts}.post_title, 'ά', 'α') LIKE '%ά%'";`. If it won't work you may create custom SQL, but it's not recommended way and less secure. [More info about hook](https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/hooks/posts_where/). – Oliwer Lisek Mar 31 '23 at 10:23