[RESOLVED] Matching user input string against table of regular expressions (reverse REGEXP?)

dotnotwhat

Hi.

I have a table with a column whose values contain regular expressions. I want to select the row(s) from this table whose regular expressions match the user input. I know how to use REGEXP to match a regular expression against values stored in a table, but I need to do the opposite.

I was really hoping this was possible within MySQL. The alternative I have at moment is reading ALL regular expressions (into my PHP script) and looping through them, testing as I go but this doesn't seem ideal.

Any help is much appreciated.
Cheers!

Steven

tomhath

Did you just try reversing the normal order of the arguments?

Something like this should work, since both the search string and the regex are just character strings:

SELECT * from theTable where $user_input REGEXP theColumn

dotnotwhat

tomhath wrote:
Did you just try reversing the normal order of the arguments?

Something like this should work, since both the search string and the regex are just character strings:

SELECT * from theTable where $user_input REGEXP theColumn

Thanks Tomhah, that's the one. I had previously tried this, but had without thinking called my column 'regexp' and of course this is a reserved word so it failed.

Works a treat, although it's a little slow working on a large number of rows.