Problems with query!

fluppet

Hi all!

i want to delete a record from an sql table colum, when it contains something - for example:

im making an updater for a site - so content can easily be updated. The problem is i want to make the data eaaily removeable by the owner, not me, of the site.

I thought of doing it by three methods,

1: delete by post number - this is easy enough - but how will the user know which post they are deleting?

2:by who its by... but thats not good beucase theyll just remove all posts.

3:by post contains. - i thought this was the best, as they can just type a scentence or so of what it contained, and then press delete. But the problem is i cant formulate a query for this!!

because i cant use what i can for the others::

"DELETE FROM updates WHERE comments = '$contains'";

Instead of th '=' i need to say, where comments contains $string... is there any way of doing this?

and also - can anybody help me to find a better method of deleting posts?

Btw, dont conjure up any too complex codes as im not perfect at php yet... thanks.

laserlight

You could use:

"DELETE FROM updates WHERE comments LIKE '%$contains%'"

However, I must say that this has great potential for terrible mistakes.

Your solution #1 is probably the best.
All you need to do is provide an interface that lists the content, or that allows searching like above.

Sort of

SELECT comments FROM updates WHERE comments LIKE '%$contains%'

then allow the user to delete from that listing, presumably via a form.

Sharif

Can you post the table structure here? Maybe I can come up with a simple but effective query.

fluppet

i can try :s - watch this

CREATE TABLE updates (
id int(4) NOT NULL auto_increment,
name varchar(50) default NULL,
title varchar(50) default NULL,
email varchar(50) default NULL,
comments text,
time timestamp(14) NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (id)
) TYPE=MyISAM;

that help?

I dont know how to link the display of posts to a string of the id# - so that one can be deleted.

any ideas?

laserlight

I dont know how to link the display of posts to a string of the id# - so that one can be deleted.

Use a form.

Ever been a moderator of a forum, where there are a whole lot of checkboxes that you can check to delete posts?

One implementation has the checkbox value as the corresponding post's id, then after authenticating the moderator, the id's are used for deletion.

Sharif

Ok to let the user know which article they are updating, why not do a select query to display the title for the article. When you update, add a WHERE statement: WHERE id = '$id'. If you are using a form, pass the value for $id along in hidden form fields.