[Resolved] search ---> days

[tomparis777]

I have a field in my table called "days". It holds the days that a bar has an event happening.

Example --
"Moe's Tavern" has specials on Wed, Fri (days ="W,F")
"Cheers" has specials on Tues, Thurs (days ="T,Th")
"Ten Forward" has specials on Fri (days ="F")

Is it possible to search for the bars that are having an event for a specific night, i.e., All bars having a special on Fri. In other words the search checks the "days" field to see if it contains an "F" in this case. So the "days" field may have "M,W,F" but the search finds the match ("F") and then pulls the record.

[bradgrafelman]

Use MySQL's 'LIKE' syntax:

$query = "SELECT * FROM `myTable` WHERE `days` LIKE '%$day%'";

The %'s are wildcards in MySQL; the equivalent of using an asterisk (*) in DOS, Unix, etc.

Give that a shot.

[Skull]

Problem with that would be that if you were searching for Tuesday, it would be LIKE '%T%' which would bring out results for Tuesday and Thursday.

storing the days as numbers (1 - 7) would solve this problem

[bradgrafelman]

And I thought I had covered it! :p

Yeah, look at the above suggestion 😉 After doing that, you could certainly use my 'LIKE' query to search for the number of the day.

[tomparis777]

If I use numbers for the days how would I make it so that when someone uses the pulldown menu to choose the day of the week (M,T,W,Th,F,Sa,Su), the form submits the number (M=1, T=2, etc...)?

[bradgrafelman]

Make an array:

$dayArray = array('M', 'T', 'W', 'Th', 'F', 'Sa', 'Su');

if(($day = array_search($_GET['day'], $dayArray)) === FALSE) die('Improper day selected.');

// $day is now the appropriate number.

NOTE: In the above example, Monday = 0, Tuesday = 1, etc. If you would rather start Monday at one, use the following array instead:

$dayArray = array('', 'M', 'T', 'W', 'Th', 'F', 'Sa', 'Su');

EDIT: Be aware of what version of PHP you're using, too:

Note: Prior to PHP 4.2.0, array_search() returns NULL on failure instead of FALSE.

(Quote taken from the manual entry for [man]array_search[/man])

EDIT2: Also forgot to mention, this is case-sensitive. Be aware of that when you're putting the values into the HTML form.

[Skull]

use the following pull down menu

<select name="day">
<option value="1">Monday</option>
<option value="2">Tuesday</option>
<option value="3">Wednesday</option>
<option value="4">Thursday</option>
<option value="5">Friday</option>
<option value="6">Saturday</option>
<option value="7">Sunday</option>
</select>

now when someone selects say Monday, the variable $_GET/POST['day'] holds the value 1 instead of M

[tomparis777]

Thank you both for your solutions. I now have the search working thanks to you. 🙂