This package enables pseudo fuzzy-searching within Laravel database and Eloquent queries. Due to its pattern matching methods, it only supports MySQL or MariaDB, though I welcome any PRs to enable support for databases like Postgres.

Much of this library is based on the fantastic work of Tom Lingham for the now abandoned Laravel Searchy package. If you're interested in the background of how the fuzzy searching works, check out the readme for that project.

Pull in the package using composer

composer require mattkingshott/quest

Quest automatically registers a service provider containing several macros. These macros are then attached to the underlying Illuminate\Database\Query\Builder class.

You can perform a fuzzy-search by calling the whereFuzzy method. This method takes two parameters. The first, is the field name. The second, is the value to use for the search e.g.

DB::table('users')
  ->whereFuzzy('name', 'jd') // matches John Doe
  ->first();

User::whereFuzzy('name', 'jd') // matches John Doe
    ->first();

You can also perform a fuzzy search across multiple columns by chaining several whereFuzzy method calls:

User::whereFuzzy('name', 'jd')  // matches John Doe
    ->whereFuzzy('email', 'gm') // matches @gmail.com
    ->first();

When using Quest, a 'relevance_*' column will be included in your search results. The * is a wildcard that will be replaced with the name of the field that you are searching on e.g.

User::whereFuzzy('email', 'gm') // relevance_email

This column contains the score that the record received after each of the fuzzy-searching pattern matchers were applied to it. The higher the score, the more closely the record matches the search term.

Of course, you'll want to order the results so that the records with the highest score appear first. To make this easier, Quest includes an orderByFuzzy helper method that wraps the relevant orderBy clauses:

User::whereFuzzy('name', 'jd')
    ->orderByFuzzy('name')
    ->first();

// Equivalent to:

User::whereFuzzy('name', 'jd')
    ->orderBy('relevance_name', 'desc')
    ->first();

If you are searching across multiple fields, you can provide an array to the orderByFuzzy method:

User::whereFuzzy('name', 'jd')
    ->whereFuzzy('email', 'gm')
    ->orderByFuzzy(['name', 'email'])
    ->first();

// Equivalent to:

User::whereFuzzy('name', 'jd')
    ->orderBy('relevance_name', 'desc')
    ->orderBy('relevance_email', 'desc')
    ->first();

When using quest an overall score will be assigned to each row _fuzzy_relevance_ with a range of 0-100.

You can enforce a minimum match standard and limit results returned by using ->atLeastFuzzy()

User::whereFuzzy('name', 'jd')
    ->atLeastFuzzy(70)
    ->first();

// Equivalent to:

User::whereFuzzy('name', 'jd')
    ->having('_fuzzy_relevance_', '>',  70)
    ->first();

It is not possible to use the paginate method with Quest as the relevance fields are omitted from the secondary query that Laravel runs to get the count of the records required for LengthAwarePaginator. However, you can use the simplePaginate method without issue. In many cases this a more preferable option anyway, particularly when dealing with large datasets as the paginate method becomes slow when scrolling through large numbers of pages.

Thank you for considering a contribution to Quest. You are welcome to submit a PR containing improvements, however if they are substantial in nature, please also be sure to include a test or tests.

If you'd like to support the development of Quest, then please consider sponsoring me. Thanks so much!

The MIT License (MIT). Please see License File for more information.