MySQL MATCH AGAINST when searching e-mail addresses

Question

I am writing a newsletter script and I need to implement searching in the addresses. I indexed the table with FULLTEXT but when I do a query such as:

SELECT * FROM addresses WHERE MATCH(email) AGAINST("name@example.com" IN BOOLEAN MODE)

I get strange results. It displays all emails on "example.com" and all emails with user "name". For example I get:

john@example.com
name@mail.net
steven@example.com

I rewrote the query to use LIKE "%name@example.com%" but for a big table it takes ridiculous amount of time to complete. Is there a solution for this? I want when searching to show only full matching emails and not part of them. Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

To match an exact phrase you have to enclose the phrase in double quotes. So change your query to:

SELECT * FROM addresses WHERE MATCH(email) AGAINST('"name@example.com"' IN BOOLEAN MODE)

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