Checking function with spaces in it in php - php

Question

I am using this query
"SELECT * FROM items WHERE itemname LIKE '%$name%'"
If $name="alex", then the query returns the correct information. But if $name="alex " with trailing whitespace, then no results are returned.
If $name="alex dude", then this is valid, but $name="alex dude " is not. I only want to remove whitespace at the end of the string.
I have written a function to clear out spaces at the end of name. This is the function.
function checkname($dataname)
{
$func_name ="";
$checker = substr($dataname, -1);
if($checker == " ")
{
$func_name = substr_replace($dataname, "", -1)
function checkname($dataname);
}
else
{
$dataname = $func_name;
}
return $dataname;
}
This gives me a PHP Parse error:
syntax error, unexpected 'function' (T_FUNCTION) in C:\inetpub\vhosts\httpdocs\compare.php on line 176`.
I don't understand why recursively calling a function is giving me an error.
Can you guys help out with this? Is there a better solution or better SQL query than I am using?

Answer 1

There are two reasons you'll get errors. The first reason, and the reason you're seeing the message:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected 'function'
is that you're missing a semicolon after $func_name = substr_replace($dataname, "", -1).
function is unexpected because you haven't terminated the previous line.
If you fix that, you'll still get an error, because you're using function checkname($dataname); to do the recursive call, when it should be return checkname($dataname); If you use it the way you have it, you'll get a cannot redeclare function error.
If you want it to work recursively, it can be simplified to
function checkname($dataname) {
if (substr($dataname, -1) == " ") {
return checkname(substr_replace($dataname, "", -1));
}
return $dataname;
}
But as others have said, this does basically the same thing as trim() or rtrim().

Answer 2

You can do direcly in sql
"SELECT * FROM items WHERE itemname LIKE concat('%', trim('$name'), '%')"
or rtrim
"SELECT * FROM items WHERE itemname LIKE concat('%', rtrim('$name'), '%')"

Answer 3

You can use trim, it's PHP native function stripping whitespace from the beginning and end of a string.
$trimmed = trim(' my string ');
echo $trimmed; // 'my string'
You can find more informations regarding it in the documentation.
By default, it will remove ordinary space, tab, new line, carriage return, NUL-byte and vertical tabs.
You can also control which characters are removed at the start and end of the string by using a second parameter to the trim function as specified in the documentation.

Answer 4

Try
SELECT * FROM items WHERE itemname LIKE '%". trim($dataname) ."%'"
trim($string) Strip whitespace (or other characters) from the beginning and end of a string

Answer 5

I'm using str_replace function
$name="a l e x" ;
$abcd = str_replace (" ", "", $name);
$res=mysql_query("SELECT * FROM `name` WHERE `name` LIKE '%$abcd%'") or die(mysql_error());
while($x=mysql_fetch_array($res))
{
echo $x['name']."<br>";
}
str_replace (" ", "", $name) helps to your problem
or by using sql
"SELECT * FROM `name` WHERE `name` LIKE '%".str_replace (" ", "", $name)."%'"
and it removes all your white spaces.