<p>Newbie question: I'm trying to implement a full text search on a search string using php and eloquent. </p> <pre class="brush:php;toolbar:false;">$searchstring = " (victim suspect) crime -covid"; $searchresult = RssItem::whereRaw("MATCH (description) AGAINST ('$searchstring' IN BOOLEAN MODE)")->get();</pre> <p>I want my users to be able to set a search string like this: </p> <pre class="brush:php;toolbar:false;">$searchstring = "(victim OR suspect) AND crime NOT covid";</pre> <p>Is there an easy way to convert user input to a boolean full text search string for mysql in php? </p>

$searchstring = '(victim OR suspect) AND crime NOT covid';
  $searchstring = str_replace(" OR ", ' ', $searchstring);
  $searchstring = str_replace(" AND ", ' +', $searchstring);
  $searchstring = str_replace(" NOT ", ' -', $searchstring);
  $searchstring = '+'.$searchstring;

  $searchresult = RssItem::whereRaw("MATCH (description) AGAINST ('$searchstring' IN BOOLEAN MODE)")->get();