Full-Text Search Summary

Key takeaways: use FULLTEXT indexes for text search, MATCH AGAINST for queries, boolean mode for control, and query expansion for recall. Know when MySQL's built-in FTS is enough and when to reach for Elasticsearch.

Example

-- Quick reference
-- Natural language: AGAINST('query' IN NATURAL LANGUAGE MODE) [default]
-- Boolean:         AGAINST('+must -exclude phrase*' IN BOOLEAN MODE)
-- Expansion:       AGAINST('query' WITH QUERY EXPANSION)
-- Relevance score: SELECT MATCH(...) AGAINST(...)
-- Index:           FULLTEXT(col1, col2)
-- With parser:     FULLTEXT(col) WITH PARSER ngram

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Pro Tip

Practice by building a blog search with full-text — it is the ideal use case.

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