What are some best practices for handling search queries across multiple tables in PHP?

When handling search queries across multiple tables in PHP, it is important to use SQL JOIN statements to combine the data from different tables based on a common key. This allows you to retrieve relevant information from multiple tables in a single query, reducing the number of queries and improving performance.

// Assuming we have two tables: users and orders
// We want to search for users who have placed orders

$search_query = "search term";

$sql = "SELECT users.*, orders.*
        FROM users
        INNER JOIN orders ON users.user_id = orders.user_id
        WHERE users.username LIKE '%$search_query%'
        OR orders.product_name LIKE '%$search_query%'";

// Execute the SQL query and handle the results accordingly