MySQL Full-Text search for hashtags (including the # symbol in index)

Question

I am pretty sure there should be a way to search for hashtags using Full-Text index in MyISAM table. Default setup would do the following:

textfield 
hashtag
#hashtag
#two #hashtag #hashtag

SELECT * FROM table WHERE MATCH(textfield) AGAINST ('#hashtag')
> | hashtag                |
> | #hashtag               |
> | #two #hashtag #hashtag |

While it should return only 2nd and 3rd rows instead. It looks like hashtag is treated as a word delimiter, so it is "removed" before the search begins. What should I do to enable indexing and searching for terms containing # as part of the word?

Answer 1

As documented under Fine-Tuning MySQL Full-Text Search:

You can change the set of characters that are considered word characters in several ways, as described in the following list. After making the modification, rebuild the indexes for each table that contains any FULLTEXT indexes. Suppose that you want to treat the hyphen character ('-') as a word character. Use one of these methods:

• Modify the MySQL source: In storage/myisam/ftdefs.h, see the true_word_char() and misc_word_char() macros. Add '-' to one of those macros and recompile MySQL.

• Modify a character set file: This requires no recompilation. The true_word_char() macro uses a “character type” table to distinguish letters and numbers from other characters. . You can edit the contents of the <ctype><map> array in one of the character set XML files to specify that '-' is a “letter.” Then use the given character set for your FULLTEXT indexes. For information about the <ctype><map> array format, see Section 10.3.1, “Character Definition Arrays”.

• Add a new collation for the character set used by the indexed columns, and alter the columns to use that collation. For general information about adding collations, see Section 10.4, “Adding a Collation to a Character Set”. For an example specific to full-text indexing, see Section 12.9.7, “Adding a Collation for Full-Text Indexing”.