Using Boolean Operators for Full Text and Boolean Searches with MySQL

Introduction

As you'll probably remember, in the previous article of the series I discussed in detail some crucial topics surrounding the implementation of full text searches using MySQL. Specifically, I covered the use of the MATCH and AGAINST statements, which when used in conjunction allow us to retrieve easily not only database results, but also different relevance rankings, depending on the terms included into a given search string.

Of course, I accompanied the discussion with numerous code samples, which hopefully helped you to grasp more easily how MySQL-based full text searches can be implemented in real-world situations. Certainly, analyzing the subject from a completely practical point of view implies that many web developers can have at their disposal a decent variety of hands-on examples to help them start rapidly incorporating these useful features into their MySQL-driven applications.

Nonetheless, I have to admit that full text searches and MySQL is a huge topic, which possibly deserves many more articles than the ones I wrote for the excellent Developer Shed network. But this doesn't prevent me from making my humble contribution to the subject. So in this last installment of the series I'm going to dive a bit deeper into the area of using full text searches with MySQL by showing you how to use the popular Boolean operators to add (and discard) specific terms from a given search string.

Are you ready to learn how to incorporate Boolean search capabilities to your web applications? Let's begin now!