Apache :: RegEx question

Brian · Joined: 21 Oct 2005 Posts: 209 Location: Puyallup, WA USA

Okay, so I have determined that for my purposes, using an "AJAX" type of search feature that it is very useful to modify the search phrase in this manner:

I type: AF 73 or AF73
It is evaluated as: A%F%7%3 for my SQL query.

As it turns out if I have a product with a db field containing FM73 (no space) and I type FM 73, no problem because I convert the space to the % wildcard character. But if the product in the DB is FM 73 (with space) and I type FM73 (no space), it is not found.

If I apply RegEx to change the evaluation to have a % between each character in the search phrase I get the matches I desire and none of the matches I don't want.

So my question is how to write the RegEx to convert "FM73" or "FM 73" or even "F M 7 3" for that matter to "F%M%7%3"

I hope this makes sense.

You can see what I mean at http://www.pccomposites.com where at the top is a search feature with the active search feature. This is what I want to improve.

Thanks.

James Blond

You may try this

Brian · Joined: 21 Oct 2005 Posts: 209 Location: Puyallup, WA USA

Okay, that works. I had not thought of such a simplified approach - I was seeing regular expressions as my best choice. This is very easy, thanks.

So I implemented this change and found it actually did in fact grab some items in the search that I did not want.

What I realize now is that I need to put a % deliminator not between each character but between letters and numbers. I am sorry for the confusion, this is my first real attempt at an AJAX style search.

So if I type: FM73
I want to convert that to: FM%73

If I type: BMS101
Convert to: BMS%101

The issue is that I have to work with the data I am given. I cannot change the database to suit a more optimal search therefore the search has to be suited for the data (does that make sense?). Some of the part numbers have a space between the letters and numbers, some do not have a space. How do I as the customer know?

That is why this is so tricky and challenging to me.

I did not foresee the original question being the wrong question to ask. And your response James would have been ideal.

glsmith

Is there no PHP equivelent to

$in =~ s/\d/\%$&/o;

glsmith

Yes, there is

Brian · Joined: 21 Oct 2005 Posts: 209 Location: Puyallup, WA USA

That did it!

Can you briefly explain how that worked though? If you don't mind of course.

You clearly have more in depth knowledge of REGEX and such than I do.

Thank you.

glsmith

Thanks to Perl.

Sure, maybe I can, I'll try;

The handiest tool is substitution using regx
substitution in perl 'removes" the target and stores it in $&
same in PHP just it's ${0}

We want to place it between the alpha and the decimal so we search for the first character after were we want to stick in the replacement (which happens to be a decimal \d ).
We replace with what we want and in your case, we need to put back in the 'removed' piece. So that is what we have done. Told it to find the first decimal and replace it with our % and put the first decimal back.

hence the '1' out at the end of the of the call to preg_replace tell it to match one time and one time only.

Notice how for the wrong question we have it seach for any word character /w (A-Za-z0-9) and do not tell it to stop after the first match. It will push a % before the first match (the B in this case) so we go right behind and strip that one off, again telling it to only replace once.

Help? Confuse?