Inverted LIKE

[poring]

I'm trying to make a query wich returns the rows where the value in the 'name' column is included in a text string. This string includes usernames separated by colons. Here is my code:

$names= ':hi:hello:';

$nyo = mysql_query ("SELECT name FROM users WHERE '$names' LIKE %:name:%");
while ($var = mysql_fetch_row ($nyo))
{
  echo $var[0];
}

This doesn't seem to work. Is there any way to do this? Thanks

[volleytotal_ch]

try this

$col = "name"; // the col name where you want to search in
$names= ":hi:hello:" // the string you want to look for

mysql_query ("SELECT name FROM users WHERE $col LIKE '%".$names."%' ");

[ratass2002]

Your original problems were extra quote for the variable $names and the missing single quotes for the LIKE arguement.

<?PHP
mysql_query ("SELECT name FROM users WHERE $names LIKE '%:name:%' ");
?>

Extra:
Double quotes will parse variables, meaning variables will be converted into their values and strings will be strings.

$name="ratass2002";
$result="$name is evil";
$result=="ratass2002 is evil" ->true

Single quote will not parse the varibles

$name="ratass2002";
$result='$name is evil'; ->$result == $name is evil
$result=="ratass2002 is evil" ->false 😃

Use single quote if there is no variables in your string, because in theory it's faster than using double quotes.

[xblue]

all versions so far will evaluate the php variables (because the complete string is doublequoted), but in none of them except the original the column name would be recognized by mysql (since it is within singlequotes).

here is how it works for me (there may be other solution though):

SELECT name FROM users WHERE '$names' LIKE CONCAT('%', name, '%')

EDIT: thinking about it [...] there is another way you might prefer:

modify $names so that it looks like
$names="'hi','hello'";

then you can use
SELECT name FROM users WHERE name in ($names)