zip code problem

raouleduke

I am storing 5 digit zip codes selected by clients like this, in a table.

56510-56511-56514-56519-56525-56529-56536-56541-56546-56547-56548-56549-56550-56552-56553-56554-56560-56561-56562-56563-56574-56579-56580-56581

In my query I am first selecting this data and replacing the hyphen with a comma, like this.

$selectedzip[] = $row["selected_zip"];
$selectedzip1 = str_replace("-", "\",\"", $selectedzip);  

$selectedzipstr = implode("','", $selectedzip1);

Then I am inserting this into a query using IN.

AND ZIP IN (\"".$selectedzipstr."\")

My question is that some of the Zip Codes in the table I am running the query on are 9 digits (56514-8476), My question is how do I only select by the first 5 digits, because when I run the query, it is not seeing these 9 digits ones as a valid part of the query. But they need to be, any help would be much appreciated.

kburger

You've got all that stored in a single field?

If that's the case I'd say that's where your biggest problem lies. Just about anytime you've got to break apart data stored in a field it indicates a database design flaw. Is there some reason you can't store those zip codes individually in rows of a table? Wouldn't that make data retrieval and manipulation much easier?

raouleduke

It works just fine, the breaking apart, that is not my question. My question is that using the IN Statement in a query how do I wildcard it. Is this possible. If I could wildcard it, I think it would work fine. Or maybe if I broke them apart, and did a query for each of them. Just some thought's, but storing them this way and breaking them apart works just fine, using the IN statement.