CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpmysql
user188962
user188962

Reputation:

mysql SELECT LIKE must match whole words only to the variable

I have a $string variable, and I use

 SELECT * FROM db WHERE description LIKE '%$string%' OR headline LIKE '%$string%'

As seen, I want to search the two fields "description" and "headline" to see if the string variable matches any of them.

Problem is that I want it to match whole words!!!

Ex: If description contains "hello", It is enough if $string is an 'h'. this is not what I want.It has to match the whole word only!

I split the querystring into words for this? or what?

Upvotes: 5

Views: 16535

Answers (2)

martin clayton
martin clayton

Reputation: 78105

An alternative to full text searching, which may be sufficient, is to use a REGEXP function.

Your example query might then be:

SELECT *
  FROM db
 WHERE description REGEXP '[[:<:]]$string[[:>:]]' = 1
    OR headline REGEXP '[[:<:]]$string[[:>:]]' = 1

See http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/regexp.html

Upvotes: 13

Corey Ballou
Corey Ballou

Reputation: 43457

If you want full word matching you should consider trying FULLTEXT searching. One prerequisite is that your table must be using the MyISAM engine:

CREATE TABLE test (
  id INT(11) UNSIGNED NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
  headline VARCHAR(120) NOT NULL,
  description VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
  FULLTEXT(headline, description)
) ENGINE=MyISAM;

You would query for matches like so:

SELECT *
FROM test
WHERE MATCH (headline,description) AGAINST('$string');

This has the added benefit of ordering your results by relevancy.

Upvotes: 9

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