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How would the best way to approach this problem be?

  • Search for user by first name, where the parameter is a string. The result should display a list of the 10 users whose first name is closest to the searched string.

Clearly there are different ways to approach this one. Is there any mysql functionality that does this already?

Should I just query all my rows and run some kind of search function?

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what does "closest to" mean? – hackattack Aug 1 '12 at 22:21
visually similar. – James Andino Aug 1 '12 at 22:22
Are you using InnoDB or MyISAM engine for the table? How many users do you plan on having in the DB? – drew010 Aug 1 '12 at 22:23
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You could use the SOUNDEX function of MySQL if you mean "sounds close enough". – tadman Aug 1 '12 at 22:26
10, 000 it is just a test query I have to write. No worry about efficiency on this one. – James Andino Aug 1 '12 at 22:37
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Have a look at MySQL Full-Text search functions which will automatically return results based on relevancy, though it will not work with InnoDB.

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There is a pretty big drawback to using MySQL Full-Text searches: you cannot search for substrings (just for prefixes). – apfelbox Aug 1 '12 at 23:46
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