Column in field list is ambiguous MYSQL, PHP, SEARCH, SELECT

Question

i am trying to select information from my mysql database with this statement after making a successful connection to the database:

$query = "SELECT * FROM `users`, `markers`,`imagemarkers` 
    WHERE username LIKE '%$s%' 
    OR email LIKE '%$s%' 
    OR location LIKE '%$s%' 
    OR author LIKE '%$s%' 
    OR bike LIKE '%$s%' 
    OR id LIKE '%$s%' 
    OR title LIKE '%$s%'";

and i am getting this error: Column 'author' in where clause is ambiguous. Which i understand to be because i have multiple tables with the same field name.

I want to extract the information from these tables, and from these fields:

 -markers:
    author
    title
    bike
    id
    date

 -imagemarkers:
   -author
   -title
   -id
   -date

 -users:
   -loction
   -email
   -username
   -id

I have searched for the solution and have so far come to the conclusion that each table field should be refered to as something like:

  markers.title
  imagemarkers.title

  markers.author
  imagemarkers.author

  markers.date
  imagemarkers.date

  markers.id
  imagemarkers.id
  users.id

And that the statement might look something like:

  SELECT markers.author
    FROM markers JOIN imagemarkers ON markers.author = imagemarkers.author

But i'm not sure how to make this work with the amount of information I need to retrieve.

The whole code i have at the moment looks like this:

        if (isset($_POST['submit'])) {
    if ($_POST['search'] !="") {
    require("connection.php");

    $s = mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['search']);
    $query = "SELECT * FROM `users`, `markers`,`imagemarkers` WHERE username LIKE '%$s%' OR email LIKE '%$s%' OR location LIKE '%$s%' OR author LIKE '%$s%' OR bike LIKE '%$s%' OR id LIKE '%$s%' OR title LIKE '%$s%'";
    $result = mysql_query($query, $connect)
        or die(mysql_error());

    $num = mysql_num_rows($result);

    echo "<h2>you searched for: " . $s . "..</h2>";
    echo "<h5>there are " . $num . " results</h4>";

while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {
    echo "<p>username: " . $row['username'] . "<br />";
    echo "location: " . $row['location'] . "</p>";
    echo "author: " . $row['author'] . "</p>";//error: Column 'author' in where clause is ambiguous, same with date. 
    echo "date: " . $row['date'] . "</p>";
    echo "id: " . $row['id'] . "</p>";
    echo "title: " . $row['title'] . "</p>"; 
    echo "<hr />";

    }
} else {
        echo "<h3> you must type something in the box</h3>";
}  }

Can anyone offer me any help?

Thanks very much.

Answer 1

thats because fields are named the same way

try:

$query = "SELECT * FROM `users` u, `markers` m,`imagemarkers` im
    WHERE u.username LIKE '%$s%' 
    OR u.email LIKE '%$s%' 
    OR u.location LIKE '%$s%' 
    OR m.author LIKE '%$s%' 
    OR m.bike LIKE '%$s%' 
    OR m.title LIKE '%$s%'";

and so on