I need to search value starting with given string in comma separated values.
Example,
I have '1_2_3_4_5_6, 1_2_3_4_5_8, 1_2_3_6_5_8' in my column. I can search for rows with exact value using
select * from table where find_in_set('1_2_3_4_5_6',column)
But how to search, if starting part of the string is given? something like this:
select * from table where find_in_set('1_2_3%',column) ?
If I understand you correctly (I'm still not sure I do), you could just use:
SELECT * FROM table WHERE column LIKE '%1_2_3%';
This would give you columns where the value is like:
1_2_3_4_5_5
1_4_5_, 1_2_3_4_5_, 6_7
and so on.
But you should really normalize your tables. This is important for good queries and performance wise also important.
According to #Xatenev suggestions, if you really like only the values and the row of each matching row, this won't work so well and will be a lot of overhead. This are the steps that I would perform:
Split all CSV columns into multiple rows (this is a hack and a performance killer, I found some working solution but did not test it, see here): Pseudo Code: SELECT ID, SPLIT(',', column) AS entries FROM table (NOT WORKING)
Filter the new virtual table to select only rows that match the prefix (SELECT * FROM virtual_table WHERE find_in_set("1_2_3%, entries) ORDER BY ID)
Concatenate the matching entries back into a list for each ID. e.g. SELECT ID, GROUP_CONCAT(entries SEPARATOR ', ') FROM filtered_table GROUP BY ID
Do something
The unknown part is the beginning with the split in multiple rows. There are a lot of possible solutions all with their own drawbacks or advantages. Be aware that this will always (regardless of the selected method) will cost a lot of performance.
ADDITIONAL NODE:
It could be adventures in your situation, that you get each row matching your search string like in my first example and filter them in memory. This might be faster than doing this in MYSQL.
you can try with 'REGEXP'
If you want to match data with subtring, please try this
SELECT * FROM `table` WHERE `column` REGEXP '[, ]?1_2_3[^,]*,?' ;
Or
If you want to exact start match, please try this
SELECT * FROM `table` WHERE `column` REGEXP '[, ]?1_2_3[^,]*,?' AND `column` NOT REGEXP '[^, ]1_2_3[^,]*,?' ;
I was able to solve it with no-regex. Sonam's Answer is correct as well.
SELECT * from table WHERE CONCAT(',', columnname, ',') like '%,1_2_3%'
This is quite difficult to explain in the title, so I'll do my best here. Basically I have a column in a MySQL products table that contains rows like:
FEL10
FEL20
FEL30
PRO05
PRO07
PRO08
VAI12
VAI13
VAI14
These are the categories ("FEL","PRO","VAI") and a identification number of my products ("10", "20" and so on). I need an SQL select query that creates me a textual array like:
FEL*
PRO*
VAI*
With this array I need to create a listbox, that allows me to choose a category (regardless of the identification number). Once I choose a category, let's say PRO*, I will need to do the reverse action: print all the products info related to PRO05, PRO07 and PRO08.
How do you think you can achieve this? I have been trying using the DISTINCT statement but I need to filter only the first characters, otherwise it will be useless. I also tried the SUBSTRING() and LEFT() functions, but they seem not to be working (I get an SQL Syntax error).
--
Thanks for your help as always
What is wrong with?
SELECT distinct left(col, 3) as category FROM `table1`
MySQL LIKE to the resque:
SELECT col1 FROM table1 WHERE col1 LIKE 'FEL%';
This way you have to add all cases using OR.
Alternative - REGEXP:
SELECT col1 FROM table1 WHERE col1 REGEXP '(FEL|PRO|VAI).*'
Then it's just a matter of writing proper regex.
I would use extra col to group your items - to avoid such selecting altogether (which should be quite expensive on bigger dataset).
https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/regexp.html#operator_regexp
To get the list of the 3-letter codes use:
select distinct left(combicode, 3)
from mytable;
When a user selects one of the values use this to get all matching entries:
select *
from mytable
where combicode like concat(#category, '%');
(Aside from that: It's a bad idea to have concatenated values in one column. Why not have one column for the category and another for the product code? Then there would be no problem at all.)
I have a column in one of my table where I store multiple ids seperated by comma's.
Is there a way in which I can use this column's value in the "IN" clause of a query.
The column(city) has values like 6,7,8,16,21,2
I need to use as
select * from table where e_ID in (Select city from locations where e_Id=?)
I am satisfied with Crozin's answer, but I am open to suggestions, views and options.
Feel free to share your views.
Building on the FIND_IN_SET() example from #Jeremy Smith, you can do it with a join so you don't have to run a subquery.
SELECT * FROM table t
JOIN locations l ON FIND_IN_SET(t.e_ID, l.city) > 0
WHERE l.e_ID = ?
This is known to perform very poorly, since it has to do table-scans, evaluating the FIND_IN_SET() function for every combination of rows in table and locations. It cannot make use of an index, and there's no way to improve it.
I know you said you are trying to make the best of a bad database design, but you must understand just how drastically bad this is.
Explanation: Suppose I were to ask you to look up everyone in a telephone book whose first, middle, or last initial is "J." There's no way the sorted order of the book helps in this case, since you have to scan every single page anyway.
The LIKE solution given by #fthiella has a similar problem with regards to performance. It cannot be indexed.
Also see my answer to Is storing a delimited list in a database column really that bad? for other pitfalls of this way of storing denormalized data.
If you can create a supplementary table to store an index, you can map the locations to each entry in the city list:
CREATE TABLE location2city (
location INT,
city INT,
PRIMARY KEY (location, city)
);
Assuming you have a lookup table for all possible cities (not just those mentioned in the table) you can bear the inefficiency one time to produce the mapping:
INSERT INTO location2city (location, city)
SELECT l.e_ID, c.e_ID FROM cities c JOIN locations l
ON FIND_IN_SET(c.e_ID, l.city) > 0;
Now you can run a much more efficient query to find entries in your table:
SELECT * FROM location2city l
JOIN table t ON t.e_ID = l.city
WHERE l.e_ID = ?;
This can make use of an index. Now you just need to take care that any INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE of rows in locations also inserts the corresponding mapping rows in location2city.
From MySQL's point of view you're not storing multiple ids separated by comma - you're storing a text value, which has the exact same meaing as "Hello World" or "I like cakes!" - i.e. it doesn't have any meaing.
What you have to do is to create a separated table that will link two objects from the database together. Read more about many-to-many or one-to-many (depending on your requirements) relationships in SQL-based databases.
Rather than use IN on your query, use FIND_IN_SET (docs):
SELECT * FROM table
WHERE 0 < FIND_IN_SET(e_ID, (
SELECT city FROM locations WHERE e_ID=?))
The usual caveats about first form normalization apply (the database shouldn't store multiple values in a single column), but if you're stuck with it, then the above statement should help.
This does not use IN clause, but it should do what you need:
Select *
from table
where
CONCAT(',', (Select city from locations where e_Id=?), ',')
LIKE
CONCAT('%,', e_ID, ',%')
but you have to make sure that e_ID does not contain any commas or any jolly character.
e.g.
CONCAT(',', '6,7,8,16,21,2', ',') returns ',6,7,8,16,21,2,'
e_ID=1 --> ',6,7,8,16,21,2,' LIKE '%,1,%' ? FALSE
e_ID=6 --> ',6,7,8,16,21,2,' LIKE '%,6,%' ? TRUE
e_ID=21 --> ',6,7,8,16,21,2,' LIKE '%,21,%' ? TRUE
e_ID=2 --> ',6,7,8,16,21,2,' LIKE '%,2,%' ? TRUE
e_ID=3 --> ',6,7,8,16,21,2,' LIKE '%,3,%' ? FALSE
etc.
Don't know if this is what you want to accomplish. With MySQL there is feature to concatenate values from a group GROUP_CONCAT
You can try something like this:
select * from table where e_ID in (Select GROUP_CONCAT(city SEPARATOR ',') from locations where e_Id=?)
this one in for oracle ..here string concatenation is done by wm_concat
select * from table where e_ID in (Select wm_concat(city) from locations where e_Id=?)
yes i agree with raheel shan .. in order put this "in" clause we need to make that column into row below code one do that job.
select * from table where to_char(e_ID)
in (
select substr(city,instr(city,',',1,rownum)+1,instr(city,',',1,rownum+1)-instr(city,',',1,rownum)-1) from
(
select ','||WM_CONCAT(city)||',' city,length(WM_CONCAT(city))-length(replace(WM_CONCAT(city),','))+1 CNT from locations where e_Id=? ) TST
,ALL_OBJECTS OBJ where TST.CNT>=rownum
) ;
you should use
FIND_IN_SET Returns position of value in string of comma-separated values
mysql> SELECT FIND_IN_SET('b','a,b,c,d');
-> 2
You need to "SPLIT" the city column values. It will be like:
SELECT *
FROM table
WHERE e_ID IN (SELECT TO_NUMBER(
SPLIT_STR(city /*string*/
, ',' /*delimiter*/
, 1 /*start_position*/
)
)
FROM locations);
You can read more about the MySQL split_str function here: http://blog.fedecarg.com/2009/02/22/mysql-split-string-function/
Also, I have used the TO_NUMBER function of Oracle here. Please replace it with a proper MySQL function.
IN takes rows so taking comma seperated column for search will not do what you want but if you provide data like this ('1','2','3') this will work but you can not save data like this in your field whatever you insert in the column it will take the whole thing as a string.
You can create a prepared statement dynamically like this
set #sql = concat('select * from city where city_id in (',
(select cities from location where location_id = 3),
')');
prepare in_stmt from #sql;
execute in_stmt;
deallocate prepare in_stmt;
Ref: Use a comma-separated string in an IN () in MySQL
Recently I faced the same problem and this is how I resolved it.
It worked for me, hope this is what you were looking for.
select * from table_name t where (select (CONCAT(',',(Select city from locations l where l.e_Id=?),',')) as city_string) LIKE CONCAT('%,',t.e_ID,',%');
Example: It will look like this
select * from table_name t where ',6,7,8,16,21,2,' LIKE '%,2,%';
I am currently working on a school system where we have a parent course and a child course (meta_courses in Moodle).
So, we have a table mdl_course_meta and it has 3 fields. Id, parent_course and child_course.
My problem is that a parent course can have many child courses so that means, for example, a parent_course = 50 can appear two times in the table which means it has 2 child courses. I just want to be able to find all the parent courses without it returning the same value twice or more times. I'm currently using this query right now which obviously doesn't do what I want:
$q = "SELECT * FROM mdl_course_meta";
I am working with PHP as well by the way.
Thanks a lot.
SELECT DISTINCT parent_course from mdl_course_meta
That should do it if you just want the course names. One thing to keep in mind, if you want other fields this is not going to work the way you want it to(how would it know which record to choose if there are multiple records with the same parent_course and you only want one).
This approach can only be used if you only want to return the parent_courses without duplicates.
DISTINCT helps to eliminate duplicates. If a query returns a result that contains duplicate rows, you can remove duplicates to produce a result set in which every row is unique. To do this, include the keyword DISTINCT after SELECT and before the output column list.
$q = "SELECT DISTINCT parent_course FROM mdl_course_meta";
If you don't want duplicate values in a single column, use GROUP BY parent_course.
In this way you are free to select any column.
If you only want distinct values for a particular column column, then you can use GROUP BY:
SELECT *
FROM mdl_course_meta
GROUP BY parent_course
The values in the other columns will be arbitrary. This will work in MySQL 5.x.
MySQL 4.x won't let you be arbitrary, so you can't mix aggregate and non-aggregate columns. Instead, you'd have to do something like this, which gets a bit complicated:
SELECT MAX(col1), MAX(col2), parent_course, MAX(col4), ...
FROM mdl_course_meta
GROUP BY parent_course
This way, the values aren't arbitrary. You've specified the ones you want.
I'm saving a string from PHP to MySQL like this..
$groupid = "13, 14, 15, 16"
$write = mysql_query("INSERT INTO table VALUES ('','$groupid')");
I'm then trying to extract data from the table if $a = "15"
$extract = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM table WHERE ustaffid='$ustaffid' AND groupid='$a'");
How can I easily match what's in $groupid to $a, while extracting it? Can I do that with MySQL?
You can use the find_in_set function here.
SELECT *
FROM table
WHERE ustaffid='$ustaffid'
AND FIND_IN_SET('$a', groupid) > 0
If $a contains only one id I would suggest seperating it into multiple records, because in string search (/ select) is slower.
I don't know if having spaces in the groupid columns would affect the find_in_set MySQL function, and as #PeeHaa notes searching inside a string is slower and is hard to optimize with indexes.
You should really consider modifying the database schema and normalize it so that instead of saving multiple values in a column, use a dependent table and relate multiple rows to the main table for each groupid value. That's what relational databases are for.
Expanding on #ecchymose's answer, you can use a regex instead of LIKE.
SELECT *
FROM table
WHERE ustaffid='$ustaffid'
AND groupid RLIKE '(^|, )$a(, |$)'
Note: You may need to escape the last $ with a \.
Note 2: This isn't the optimal solution. You should really have a separate row for each ID (with the ID being the PRIMARY key).
SELECT *
FROM table
WHERE ustaffid='$ustaffid'
AND groupid LIKE '%$a,%'
But you have to end your string with a comma at the end.