PHP/MySQL - include plurals but exclude singulars

Question

I am building a site with a requirement to include plural words but exclude singlular words, as well as include longer phrases but exclude shorter phrases found within it.

Answer 1

You should consider using FULL TEXT SEARCH.

This will solve your Bread/read issue.

I believe use of wildcards here isn't useful. Lets say you are using '%read%', now this would also return bread, breads etc, which is why I recommended Full Text Search

Answer 2

Searching for %breads% would NEVER return bread or read, as the 's' is a required character for the match. So just eliminate the and clause:

SELECT ... WHERE (field LIKE '%breads%')
SELECT ... WHERE (field LIKE '%paperback book%');

Answer 3

With MySQL you can use REGEXP instead of like which would give you better control over your query...

SELECT * FROM table WHERE field REGEXP '\s+read\s+'

That would at least enforce word boundaries around your query and gives you much better control over your matching - with the downside of a performance hit though.