How to use the OR statement in MySQL while using the LIKE search statement

I am trying to create a good little search statement that searches muitple fields using the with different search terms depending on what is returned. I am basiclly setting an order in which I want to search if one search term is not found try the next one. However I am using a WHERE clause to seperate search only one type of data. Currently I am getting some strange results returned because I don't think my order is correct, it seems that my WHERE clause is being ignored.

here is my statement (I am usig PHP):

mysql_query("SELECT * FROM item AS i LEFT JOIN country AS c ON i.country_id = c.country_id WHERE i.item_status = 'active' AND (i.item_name LIKE '%".$_SESSION['item']."%') OR i.item_description LIKE '%".$_SESSION['description']."%' OR i.item_name LIKE '%".$_SESSION['description']."%' ");

Thank you in advance.

Solution

Why don't you use full-text search feature?

Need to alter table structure for create fulltext search index.

ALTER TABLE item ADD FULLTEXT (item_name, item_description);

Then your queries turns to:

mysql_query("
SELECT * FROM item AS i LEFT JOIN country AS c ON i.country_id = c.country_id 
WHERE i.item_status = 'active' AND 
MATCH (i.item_name, i.item_description)
AGAINST (" . $_SESSION['item'] . " " . $_SESSION['description'] . ");
");

Simple, accurate, and faster.