Search a MySQL table for Comma Separated Area Codes - php

Question

I'm trying to modify an existing script I have, that will only output rows that contain specific area codes to users that have be assigned the specific area codes.
Example:
A column named designed_areas in the users table will contain different data like: CM,SS,RH
When a lead comes in, I'm using substr to detect the first 2 characters of a post code.
$trimmed = substr("$postcode", 0, 2);
$viewLeads=mysqli_query($con,"SELECT * FROM leads WHERE team = '$getID->team' ORDER BY id DESC");
while($lead=mysqli_fetch_object($viewLeads)){
I'd like to expand on the mysqli_query and select all the leads from the database where the first 2 characters of the postcode matches any of users designated_areas.. which are comma seperated.
This way, he'll only see leads with the areas he can work on.
Can anyone help?

Answer 1

You can try to use a query like:
SELECT * FROM leads WHERE team = '$getID->team' and designed like '%{$trimmed}%' ORDER BY id DESC;
Php code:
$viewLeads=mysqli_query($con,"SELECT * FROM leads WHERE team = '$getID->team' and designed like '%{$trimmed}%' ORDER BY id DESC;");

Answer 2

You can do it with a regex. For example, in MySQL, if your postal_code table looks something like this:
PersonID Zips
1 11111,22222,33333
2 22222,12121,32323
And you want persons that have postal codes like 33*
SELECT PersonID FROM `postal_code` WHERE zips rlike '33[0-9]{3}'
This assumes that all postal codes are 5 digits and you're always searching using 2 digits. It basically says "find me 5 digit numbers where the first two digits are 33" or whatever your search numbers are.
The PHP code might look like:
$search = 33 ;
$sql = "SELECT PersonID FROM `postal_code` WHERE zips rlike '$search[0-9]{3}'" ;
This solution will find matches regardless of commas, spaces, etc. You won't need any further processing in your PHP code.