How to order results based on number of search term matches?

Posted by Travis on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Travis
Published on 2010-03-11T18:52:15Z Indexed on 2010/03/11 18:54 UTC
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I am using the following tables in mysql to describe records that can have multiple searchtags associated with them:

TABLE records
    ID
    title
    desc

TABLE searchTags
    ID
    name

TABLE recordSearchTags
    recordID
    searchTagID

To SELECT records based on arbitrary search input, I have a statement that looks sort of like this:

SELECT 

    recordID

FROM 

    recordSearchTags

LEFT JOIN searchTags 

ON recordSearchTags.searchTagID = searchTags.ID 

WHERE 

    searchTags.name LIKE CONCAT('%','$search1','%') OR
    searchTags.name LIKE CONCAT('%','$search2','%') OR
    searchTags.name LIKE CONCAT('%','$search3','%') OR
    searchTags.name LIKE CONCAT('%','$search4','%');

I'd like to ORDER this resultset, so that rows that match with more search terms are displayed in front of rows that match with fewer search terms.

For example, if a row matches all 4 search terms, it will be top of the list. A row that matches only 2 search terms will be somewhere in the middle. And a row that matches just one search term will be at the end.

Any suggestions on what is the best way to do this?

Thanks!

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