Easy tagging solution

This an easy solution for adding tag support for any website. This is not a complete script, or addon, just a method you can use easily. The result will produce a tag cloud, like the one you can see in my sidebar.
STEP 1: Setup. Let's assume that you have a site that stores the articles in a table. You have to add a field that will store the tags. The tags will be separated by a space character.

STEP 2: Generating the tag list:

function get()
{
	// CodeIgniter based database query.
	$this->db->select( 'p_tags');
	$this->db->from( 'posts' );
	$query = $this->db->get('posts');
    
	/**
	 *  If the loop on the tags founds a tag that is already 
	 *  represented in the $tag_cloud array as a key, then
	 *  its value will be inceremented by 1                  
	 */                 
	$tag_cloud = array();

	foreach ( $query->result_array() as $key => $t )
	{
	    $tags = $t['p_tags'];

	    if( $tags )
	    {
	        // Tags must be separated by 'space'
	        $tags = explode( ' ', $tags );
	        
            foreach( $tags as $tg )
	        {
    			if( !array_key_exists( $tg, $tag_cloud ) )
                {
                    $tag_cloud[ $tg ] = 1; // Default count
                }
                else
                {
                    $tag_cloud[ $tg ]++; // Tag exists, increment its value
                }
            }
        }
	}
	// Order by value, keep indexing, reverse order
	arsort( $tag_cloud );
	return $tag_cloud;
}

STEP 3: Filter posts for a tag. In my case the "posts" table's tag field is: "tagging php tutorial". If I want to list all the articles with the "php" tag, then I need to handle 4 cases: a tag can be the first tag, inside the string, the last and exact match.

$this->db->where( "p_tags LIKE '% $cat %' OR 
				   p_tags LIKE '$cat %' OR 
				   p_tags LIKE '% $cat'
				   p_tags = '$cat'" );

Note that the first and third rule has only one %.

Tibor SzászInteraction matters

Easy tagging solution

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