Help. Searching for fields in the database containing accented characters

spags

Hey

I have some names in the database that were entered with accented characters. When I do a search for those (with non-accented characters) it comes up with no results.

What is the best way to handle this?

I thought of having one field with the name as a "display" name with all their fancy characters in it, and then having them enter the normal letters in another field. All searches would be performed with those fields, while displaying data would use the "display" field.

My boss was wondering if there was some sql function to use to "ignore" the accented characters. I tried like, and it didn't work.

😕 😕 😕 😕 😕

Thanks

sfullman

People who enter names with accented characters have the keyboards set to do that. If using a search query, this is cumbersome, but you can use:

WHERE(

REPLACE('string', 'fancy letter', 'simple equivalent') = "Fernano"

)

Or you could develop a map between accented and non-accented characters:

REPLACE(
REPLACE(
REPLACE(
REPLACE(
REPLACE(
REPLACE(
'STRING',
'fancy1', 'simple1'),
'fancy2', 'simple2'),
..
..
..
..
'fancy6', 'simple6')
Here's a URL for ASCII characters:
http://samuelfullman.com/team/html/ascii.htm

-- or you could use regular expressions!!!

And I suggest you do these conversions in PHP vs. using the example above.

Sam Fullman