Need help with a "name contains" search.

Anon

Okay, this is a beginners question.

I have a search features that lets people search a database of names by entering the first few characters of the name. This is my "starts with" search. My script looks like this...

"select blah blah blah
where
table.name like '$name%'

This works, but now I want to do a "name contains" search. I tried putting the "%" symbol before and after the field name, but it doesn't work. This is what I tried...

"select blah blah blah
where
table.name like '%$name%'

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks in advance.

Anon

first of all you did not specify which database you are using. for pgsql it is as follows:

COMPARISON OPERATION
begins with D LIKE 'D%'
contains a D LIKE '%D%'
had D in second position LIKE '_D%'
begins with D and contains e LIKE 'D%e%'
begins with non D NOT LIKE 'D%'

most of these should work on MySql, if not check out the manual @ http://mysql.com/

Anon

You need to be a little more informative about what you
mean by "didn't work". Please supply specifics: not only
what db you are using, but also what search pattern you
used and what target rows had what data that you thought
should have matched but didn't. It could, for example, be
as simple as uppercase vs lowercase, but we have no way
of knowing without more info.

Anon

I'm using MYSQL, and I just get this general error message:
"Warning: Unable to jump to row 0 on MySQL result index 2"

Anon

Bill,

I'm using MYSQL.
Your illustration makes sense.
I'm already using the "begins with" as you listed and it's working--> '$fieldname%'

I don't know why the "contains" isn't working. It looks the same as what you wrote: '%$fieldname%'

(except for the "$" sign, which I'm assuming has to be there since this results page is catching the variable passed from a previous page.)

Anon

Bill,

I don't know what I was doing wrong before, but I just got it to work using the example that you listed.
Thanks!

Anon

Warning: Unable to jump to row 0 on MySQL result index 2

This is actually an indirect result of your search problem.
It means you're doing the SELECT query and then blindly
trying to retrieve a row without first checking to see
if the query produced any rows by calling mysql_numrows().