Hello,

I'm trying to find way to let the user search for addresses in a database similar googles maps does. That means, if the search string is something like 'Denver' the user will get just one result, because there's only one city in the db with extactly the same name. If it is something like 'Denver av' there might be more results, including the streets, not the city. If it is 'Denver Av LA' its just one again, beacuse theres only one Denver Av in LA. Could also be 'LA Denver Av'. That means a set of combinations leads to the same result. In Google you can also search for 'Denver LA av', but that's not necessary. Anyone beeing occupied with this before? I'm thankful for every hint. Supported columns should be street, zip, city, streetno. Table has about 1000 rows. My first approach was to concat every column and use 'like'. But that did not really work. Hopy you have some ideas.

Thanks, silas

the solution you are looking for will depend on exactly how you analyze the incoming user search string and translate it into an appropriate query

therefore, this is not a mysql question but rather an application language question

what are you using? php?

Yes, php with mysql. I'm currently trying to solve this with a view or stored procedure. But still don't have a clue how to start. Maybe a regexp in a concated string?
Edit: And perhaps a extra column for the quality of the match.

moving thread to php forum

seriously, you have to do the bulk of the logic in php

otherwise the SQL will not know when to search for denver as a city or denver as a street

you did, after all, stipulate that you wanted a smart address search algorithm

I want a sql solution. Pull me back.

okay, it's your thread, i'll move it back to mysql forum

good luck getting a "smart" solution

Thanks for your sarcasm. I'm pretty confident it's up in someones sleeve out there :-)

oh, you're quite welcome, i think you earned it

Well, this is really starts annoying me. I posted a simple question and you blow up my thread with unreasonable comments.Too bad about this forum, I once really liked it.

i don't think they were unreasonable, but i do apologize if you were offended

we have lots of competent mysql people here, don't give up yet...