[RESOLVED] Retrieving data based on one element of a comma separated list

[ClarkF1]

I'm changing a database so that some details can be in multiple categories rather than just one.

The category ids are stored in a field separated by commas.

I currently have

$query = "SELECT name FROM contacts WHERE catid = '$id'"; where $id is a single id number.

That works fine if the contact is only in one category, however the catid field contains say 4,7,23,102 and I try to retrieve data for contacts with catid 23 it won't find it
I've tried using LIKE and CONTAINS but neither work.

[laserlight]

Have you considered adding a categories table, and then add another table to link the two tables (if it is a many-many relationship)?

[Roger_Ramjet]

Definitley do as laserlight sez. Trouble with this comma list and LIKE is that %2% will match 2 and 12 and 22, etc

[ClarkF1]

I tried using % and got nothing out of it.

Managed to get it working using the another table as suggested.