PHP: search comma separated string in mysql? - php

Question

I have a mysql query which simply looks into mysql to find LIKE strings and displays the result.
Within the same mysql query, I have 2 LIKE.
1 is always a single string and the other one can be single and sometimes multiple strings separated by commas.
when I use my code, I get no results at all even though I have all the fields in the mysql database and I also have all the search strings in the columns.
This is my code:
$area = 'London';
$res = 'santandar, HSBC, RBS, ';
$sql = "SELECT * FROM banks WHERE location LIKE '%$area%' AND name LIKE '%$res'";
I also tried it with preg_match and it didn't return anything:
$sql = "SELECT * FROM banks WHERE location LIKE '%$area%' AND name LIKE '".preg_match($res)."'";
If I remove the second LIKE and my code looks like below, it works just fine:
sql = "SELECT * FROM banks WHERE location LIKE '%$area%'";
So the issue starts when I try to search using a comma separated string.
Could someone please advise on this issue?
EDIT:
The PHP varibles are POSTS so they can be anything in each post.
they are like so:
$area = $_POST['area'];
$res = $_POST['res'];

Answer 1

you should use an OR condition:
$res_array = explode(',' $res)
$num_elem= count($res_array) // with this value you can build dinamically the query
"SELECT * FROM banks WHERE location LIKE '%$area%'
AND ( name LIKE concat('%', $res_array[0]),
OR LIKE concat('%', $res_array[1])
OR LIKE concat('%', $res_array[2]) ";

Answer 2

You are going to need to blow this out into separate LIKEs with an OR, such as:
...WHERE location LIKE '%{$area}' AND (name LIKE '%{$name1}%' OR name LIKE '%{$name2}' OR ...)
You could write this fairly simply with some PHP logic:
function build_like_or( $values, $field_name ) {
// Create an array from the comma-separated values
$names = explode( ',', $values );
// Trim all the elements to remove whitespaces
$names = array_map( 'trim', $names );
// Remove empty elements
$names = array_filter( $names );
$where = array();
// Loop over each, placing the "LIKE" clause into an array
foreach( (array)$names AS $name ) {
$where[] = "{$field_name} LIKE '%{$name}%'";
}
// Glue up the LIKE clauses.
$where = '(' . implode(' OR ', $where) . ')';
// Results will be something like:
// $where = "(name LIKE '%santadar%' OR name LIKE '%HSBC%')"
return $where;
}
Usage:
$area = 'London';
$res = 'santandar, HSBC, RBS, ';
$name_where = build_like_or( $res, 'name');
$sql = "SELECT * FROM banks WHERE location LIKE '%$area%' AND {$name_where}";
// echo $sql outputs "SELECT * FROM banks WHERE location LIKE 'London' AND (name LIKE '%santadar%' OR name LIKE '%HSBC%' OR name LIKE '%RBS%')