MySQL SELECT parameter

[Anon]

I was wondering if something like the following is possible...

$sql = "SELECT * FROM $table_name WHERE name CONTAINS 'jo'"

I don't think that the above would actually work, but is there another way to reword this statement so I would get all the names that had 'jo' in them... it would return Josh, Joan, Joe, John, etc... whatever was in my table?

[theslinky]

Hi,

Try this:

$sql = "SELECT * FROM $table_name WHERE name LIKE '%jo%'";

Make sure you put in the % signs before and after jo. This way all of these would match:

josh
john
joan
banjo

So basically, the % is like a wildcard and the MySQL keyword LIKE tells it to match anything <i>like</i> the expression.

hope this helps!
-sridhar

[chowdary]

Hi,
What Mr.Sridhjar suggested was right but,if you want the all the names which contains the specified string use the query Mr.Sridhar suggested.
If you want to list the names starting with the specified string use this
$qry="SELECT * FROM $table_name WHERE $field_name LIKE 'jo%'";

[dstockto]

Another thing to be aware of is that MySQL is very slow with queries that start with %.

[Anon]

Thanks! That's exactly what I needed... about how much slower does everything go with the %?

[dstockto]

I'm not sure but the mysql documentation mentions this.

Dave