Posted by Brian A. Anderson on 01/18/05 22:46

I am new(relatively) to php programing and searching. I am trying to
understand the best way to access data and deliver results to searches on a
product catalog website.

I have two kinds of data that I am sorting and displaying results for. The
first is info about specific products, and the other is text based general
information, notes, and specials that will be stored in a database as well.

My question is what is the best way to format and sort all of this info
before results delivery.

I am thinking of incrementally adding the resultant hits into two
associative arrays with the link to the data and a calculated relevance
value, and sorting this array by these relevences. One array would be for
text data links and another would be for catalog item links. If I have two
arrays(sorted), than I could display them like Amazon.com does with products
in the main display area(with pictures), and text links to the side.

Am I thinking of an efficient way to go about this, or not? I wonder if
anyone has more experience, or some suggested resources in understanding
building good search building? I would like to find such a book or resource
that maps out good search and results procedures.


-Brian

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