query specific table based on search keyword in mysql

Question

I am creating a search portal in PHP from which user can search for a specific cuisine. In MySQL I have multiple tables for each cuisine and the respective hotel names that offer the cuisine. For example, in table

How can I query a specific cuisine table based on the cuisine search keyword?

So if a user enters 'mexican' as the search query, how can it connect to the 'Table2 - Mexican' and return the hotel names from this table?

Table1 - Chinese
_______________________
| id   |   hotelname  |
|______|______________|
| 1    |  hotel1      |
| 2    |  hotel2      |
| 3    |  hotel3      |
| 4    |  hotel4      |
| 5    |  hotel5      |
|______|______________|

Table2 - Mexican
_______________________
| id   |   hotelname  |
|______|______________|
| 1    |  hotel1      |
| 2    |  hotel2      |
| 3    |  hotel3      |
| 4    |  hotel4      |
| 5    |  hotel5      |
|______|______________|

Table3 - Pizza
_______________________
| id   |   hotelname  |
|______|______________|
| 1    |  hotel1      |
| 2    |  hotel2      |
| 3    |  hotel3      |
| 4    |  hotel4      |
| 5    |  hotel5      |
|______|______________|

Answer 1

Your database concept is very unflexible. I think you should put the cuisines into your database as information (ie table content) instead of metadata describing single tables. Tables should generally considered to be static just like the code you write to access the database and its tables. If you implement the cuisines as different tables you would have to hardwire every cuisine into your code.

Here is a suggestion for a better approach:

• Create a hotels table to store all the hotels,
• Create a cuisines table to store all the different types of cuisines,
• Make an additional table to establish the n:m relationship between the hotel and the cuisine.

Example:

hotels:  id, name, address, city, telno, email
cuisine: id, name, description
rel:     cuisine, hotel (where both are the foreign keys to the
                         id columns of the respective tables above)

See also:

• How to handle a Many-to-Many relationship with PHP and MySQL.
• MySQL: Many To Many Relationships » Return True

Answer 2

you can check SQL UNION . But instead of having multiple tables with the same fields, you can try normalization to minimize the redundancy and to make queries easier.

Something like:

 Hotel Table
 -----------------------------
 id | hotelname    | categoryID
 ------------------------------
 1  | hotel name 1 | 1
 2  | hotel name 2 | 2
 -----------------------------

 Category Table
 -------------------
  id | categoryname 
 -------------------
   1 | chinese
   2 | mexican
 ------------------

And query as simple as:

SELECT a.hotelname, b,categoryname 
      FROM hotel_table a 
      LEFT JOIN category_table b 
      ON a.categoryID = b.id AND b.categoryname LIKE '%mexican%'; 

Answer 3

You might want to check this question to create a many-to-many relationship:
many-to-many and many-to-many intersections

I guess what you would like to achieve is something like this:

Table1 - Hotel
_______________________
| id   |   hotelname  |
|______|______________|
| 1    |  hotel1      |
| 2    |  hotel2      |
| 3    |  hotel3      |
| 4    |  hotel4      |
| 5    |  hotel5      |
|______|______________|

Table2 - Cuisine
____________________________________________
| id   | cuisine_name | keywords           |
|______|______________|____________________|
| 1    |  Chinese     | Shandong,Noodles,. |
| 2    |  Mexican     | Tacos,Beans,...    |
| 3    |  Itarian     | Pizza,Pasta,..     |
|______|______________|____________________|

Table3 - HotelCuisine
___________________________________
| id   |  hotel_id  |  cuisine_id |
|______|____________|______________
| 1    |    1       |      2      |
| 2    |    1       |      3      |
| 3    |    2       |      1      |
| 4    |    2       |      2      |
| 5    |    3       |      3      |
|______|____________|_____________|

SQL:

 SELECT hotelname, cuisine_name FROM Hotel
 INNER JOIN HotelCuisine ON Hotel.id = HotelCuisine.hotel_id
 INNER JOIN Cuisine ON Cuisine.id = HotelCuisine.cuisine_id
 WHERE keywords like '%pizza%'

Result:

________________________________________
| hotelname     | cuisine_name         |
|_______________|______________________|
| hotel1        | Itarian              |                     
| hotel3        | Itarian              |                     
|_______________|______________________|

DEMO: http://sqlfiddle.com/#!2/961de/1

Hope this helps