Not sure where to start...

[phatgreenbuds]

So the plan is to create a page where people who have uploaded their pic can then create key words to search for them later.  For instance if I upload the family photos from thanksgiving I want to be able to include the terms "Turkey, Gravy, Cranberry, etc etc."

 

I assume I have to do this with an array and thats where I start losing my mind. What method should I use to store that array in the DB? Serialize? Implode? There are so many different opinions on google's random page results, I thought best to come here where I have always had success. 

 

Step one is to present the options. I plan to use static options in the form of check boxes for now (text fields later).

Step two is to store that array in the DB...The reason I am here now.

Step three will be to create a means to search that DB for arrays that contain those key words...I am sure I will be back for that.

 

As always I am not looking for the "code handout" but rather the pointer or hints that would help me figure it out myself.

[Goldeneye]

If you're going to be searching Keywords, it will be easier to implode that array, and store it in a TEXT-field. Also make sure that text-field is a FULLTEXT key.

 

Serializing an array would be more work as you have unserialize the retrieved arrays and then compare them to the searched keywords.

[phatgreenbuds]

What do you mean here?

Also make sure that text-field is a FULLTEXT key

I assume you mean no strange characters to be used as a seperator in the implode function...or am I missing it?

[Goldeneye]

Well, if you're using MySQL and phpMyAdmin, you create a field with a name of your choice (maybe `keywords`), select "TEXT" under fieldtype, and check the FULLTEXT checkbox.

 

Just implode the keywords with spaces:

 

$keywords = array('foo', 'bar', 'twix', 'none', 'for', 'you');

$keywords = implode(' ', $keywords);

//And then insert $keywords into your Database

[phatgreenbuds]

ahhh gotcha...ok kool this is getting my brain going again...once I finish this part I will begin the searching portion. but for now its the tedious presentation work.

[keldorn]

What I would do, is tell them to seperate each word a ,

Then on a post i would take it and check for against a whitelist of characters with a regex to allow only letters and numbers and colons (,)

 

Then I would explode it into a an array value via each colon, then iterate threw each value and apply trim() , utf8_encode() and strtolower(), then ucfirst(),  Then strlen() each value to make sure its not longer then set about of characters, and is also longer then 3 characters,  else reject it. Then I would iterate over  each value again with mysql_real_escape_string()

 

Then next I would place it into a database , each word, would get its own row, but I would set the colume the word is in, as Unique index, so if it return false, after the query, then I would run the mysql_query again on that row, and increment a counter in the table by +1.

 

To generate the tags, I would grab say, 20 row, ORDER BY counter ASC and apply a mathematical formula against all 20 words, and make the words bigger that have a higher value in their counter. 

 

EDIT: I probably need to sleep, I thought you wanted a tag cloud.