[RESOLVED] finding an exact match from a urlencoded, serialized array?

[perpetualshaun]

I am wondering if there is a way to find an exact match in a field, where the contents is a urlencoded, serialized array? Im my case, I'm trying to find the value J-4 in the prod_cat_page_no field, but those values in the database are stored as urlencoded, serialized arrays and my search is returning results w/ J-4, J-40, J-41, etc. etc. Here's a copy of my query:

SELECT * FROM products WHERE 1 AND prod_cat_page_no LIKE '%J-4%'

I tried using the ASCII code for the perentage sign after the J-4 thinking that might do the trick, but no luck. Here's what one of the resulting fields data looks like:

a%3A2%3A%7Bi%3A0%3Bs%3A3%3A%22J-4%22%3Bi%3A1%3Bs%3A3%3A%22J-8%22%3B%7D

Any ideas? I realize now that I should have just stored the cat_page_no values in another table instead of this urlencode, serialized method. But it would be a major PITA to go back and recode several screens to work from that alternate logic. Does anyone know of something I can add to my query her to get the results I'm looking for?

Thanx,

Shaun

[devinemke]

this is very bad data design, but i guess you already knew that. i really suggest that you loop thru each row and [man]urldecode[/man] and [man]unserialize[/man] and put this data in a new table. this will ultimately be a more useful way to store this data.

[perpetualshaun]

I certainly won't deny that I should have built the separate table to begin w/. And I wrote a few scripts that quickly went through my existing product tables and created rows in this new "relation" table. However, that still leaves me w/ the challenge of updating the MANY pages that call from these records, and the site is already live so I need to try and minimize the down time for the site.

Does anyone know of ANY possible way that I can just get my query to work?