MYSQL search for right words | fixing spelling errors

Question

I have a table dictionary which contains a list of words Like:

   ID|word
   ---------
    1|hello
    2|google
    3|similar
    ...
         


        

Answer 1

What you want to do is called a fuzzy search. You could use the SOUNDEX function in MySQL, documented here:

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/string-functions.html#function_soundex

You query would look like:

SELECT * FROM dictionary where SOUNDEX(word) = SOUNDEX(:yourSearchTerm)

... where your search term is bound to the :yourSearchTerm parameter value.

A next step would be to try implementing and making use of a Levenshtein function in MySQL. One is described here:

http://www.artfulsoftware.com/infotree/qrytip.php?id=552

The Levenshtein distance between two strings is the minimum number of operations needed to transform one string into the other, where an operation may be insertion, deletion or substitution of one character.

You might also consider looking into databases that are aimed at full text searching, such as Elastic Search, which provides this natively:

https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/query-dsl-fuzzy-query.html