Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Fuzzy match - fuzzystrmatch
This extension provides a set of functions for determining the distance and similarity
between strings. Search engines such as Google search for similar words; through the ex-
tension
fuzzystrmatch
you are able to use this feature in your queries.
In the following example, you will add some names and use the function called
differ-
ence
to discover their similarity. This function returns a value from 0 to 4, where 0 (zero)
is the exact match and 4 (four) is the distant correspondence:
$ heroku pg:psql --app your-app-name
CREATE EXTENSION fuzzystrmatch;
CREATE TABLE doctors (name text);
INSERT INTO doctors (name) VALUES ('Patrick');
INSERT INTO doctors (name) VALUES ('Padrig');
SELECT difference(
(SELECT name FROM doctors WHERE name = 'Patrick'),
(SELECT name FROM doctors WHERE name = 'Padrig')
);
difference
------------
4
There are other functions such as
soundex
,
levenshtein
,
metaphone
, and
dmeta-
phone
. You can find more information about them on the extension documentation at
ht-
