Sql: search column that starts with digits - php

I'm having trouble with the sql below. Basically I have rows that contains strings according to the format: 129&c=cars. I only want the digits part, e.g. 129. The sql query is:
$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM " . $db_table . " WHERE id LIKE '" . $id . "%'");
Why doesn't % work? I can't use %...% because it catches too much.

I would actually recommend using regular expressions fo the matching, but unfortunately, there is no way to capture the matching part with mysql. You will have to do the extraction in php. If you have an array containing all the results called $array:
$array = preg_replace('/^(\d+).*/', '$1', $array);

You can use the MySQL 'regexp' stuff in the WHERE clause to reduce the amount of data retrieved to just the rows you want. The basic for of your query would look like:
SELECT * FROM table WHERE field REGEXP '^$id&'
where $id is inserted by PHP and the data you want is always at the start of the field and followed by a &. If not, adjust the regex to suit, of course.
MySQL's regex engine can't do capturing, unfortunately, so you'll still have to do some parsing in PHP as soulmerge showed above, but with the 'where regexp' stuff in MySQL, you'll only have to deal with rows you know contain the data you want, not the entire table.

Using a query like this:
SELECT *
FROM mytable
WHERE id >= '0' COLLATE UTF8_BIN
AND id < ':' COLLATE UTF8_BIN
will return all strings that start with a digit and make your expression sargable, i. e. and index on id can be used.
This will make your query run faster.

Related

Problems composing php sql query for postgresql table using LIKE

I am trying to retrieve data from a postgresql table therefore I have written a code. Now I am trying to compose the sql query but it isn't working. With my query I am trying to search in the table genes_searchterms and find all geneID matching where in the column types the value is equal to Pathway and where in the column searchterm the word aging is present.
Bellow the code to compose my query:
$sqlquery = "SELECT DISTINCT \"gene_id\" FROM \"" . \"genes_searchterms\" .
"\" WHERE ". "(\"types\" LIKE '". \"Pathway\" . "'
AND \"searchterm\" LIKE '" . \"%aging%\" ."') ";
Is there something wrong in the composition of my query? I use drupal and I don't get any errors when executing the code. I can't figure out where I got it wrong.
I use PostgreSQL 9.2.23.
In the fiddle is a part displayed of my table
https://www.db-fiddle.com/f/t7ThJ7Aen9XYzv2EtepinP/0
I've tried to get your Query up and running in db-fiddle. I also got no result, so I rechecked your condition and tried them separately. The error was in the "searchterm" condition.
You're using the ~* operator wich matches, according to the documentation, a Regex case insensitive. Since % isn't a pattern in Regex it matches "%aging%" literally. Only if you use LIKE in the query. % will be used as a wild card.
You could ether use a correct Regex or switch to LIKE.

Mysql FullText index searching issue

I am using MySql FullText indexing to search data from database.
Here is the query
$search_input_text = 'the_string_to_be_search';
$searchArray = explode(" ", $search_input_text);
$query="SELECT * FROM car_details
WHERE MATCH (car_trim) AGAINST ('";
foreach ($searchArray as $word) {
$query .= "+".$word."* ";
}
$query .= "' IN BOOLEAN MODE) LIMIT $start, $limit";
The query is executing fine but it has a bug, if you look at the column name you will find car_trim which is inside the MATCH() function. The column has only 3 different types of values in the database which are 'T5', 'T6' and 'T5 premier'.
When I type 'Premier' in the search bar and hit Enter, it fetches the results whose values contain the word 'Premier'. But when I type T5 or T6 , it returns an empty record. Please be sure that there are lots of records with car_trim='T5', car_trim='T6' or car_trim='T5 Premier'
I am not getting that what can be the problem with the strings T5 and T6.
MySQL has two key parameters when using full text search (and a few other important ones). The key parameters are the minimum word length and the stop words list. In short, MySQL ignores words that are less than 3 or 4 characters (depending on the storage engine) or that are in the stop word list.
Your examples ("T5" and "T6") are too short -- based on the parameter defaults.
Some other configuration parameters might be of interest, such as the maximum word length and the characters that are valid for words.
You can change the parameters for full text indexing and re-build the index.
Here is a good place to start in understanding this.

MySQL (innoDB) PHP search multiple words

I am running MySQL version 5.1.57
I have a HTML form where a user can insert a search-string. I create a $_SESSION on this string, then I run it in a MySQLquery. Something like this:
<?php
$sql = mysql_query ("SELECT
s.student_firstname, s.student_lastname
FROM students s
WHERE (
s.student_firstname LIKE '%$searchstring%' OR
s.student_lastname LIKE '%$searchstring%
)
AND s.isActive = '1' ");
?>
The problem is when a user is searching for multiple words. Then my query fails because it is trying to match the string against the values in either column.
I've read something about MySQL FULLTEXT indexing but as far as I understand, it only works on MyISAM tables(?). How can I be able to search for multiple words using the environment that I have?
I think you should split your searched string on space (" ") and insert each segment in your query, or in another query. For example :
$str = "word1 word2";
With that you search first for the whole string "word1 word2" and after you search in you database for "word1" and "word2".
With this solution you should handle a word ignore list, because words like "a, an, the, or, ..." shouldn't be seek ...
I'm not sure there is an other way with an innoDB table ... The best solution is obviously to use the "match against" command, but it's only available with a full text index under MyISAM.

Converting varchar into an int just for the search query?

What I've been trying to do is to select a row from a table while treating the varchar cells as int ones,
Here's a little explanation:
I have a table of phone numbers, some have "-" in them, some don't.
I wanted to select a number from the database, without including those "-" in the query.
So I used this preg_replace function:
$number = preg_replace("/[^0-9]/","",$number); //that leaves only the numbers in the variable
and then I run the following query:
"SELECT * FROM `contacts` WHERE `phone` = '{$number}'"
Now, of course it won't match sometimes since the number Im searching may have "-" in the database, so I tried to look for a solution,
on solution is just converting the cells into int's, but I'm not interested in doing that,
So after looking around, I found a MySQL function named CAST, used like : CAST(phone AS UNSIGNED)
I tried to mess with it, but it didn't seem to work.
Edit:
I kept looking around for a solution, and eventually used MySQL's REPLACE function for that.
"SELECT * FROM `contacts` WHERE REPLACE(phone,'-','') = '{$number}'"
Thank you all for your help.
MySQL doesn’t support extraction of regex matches.
You could try writing a stored function to handle it, but your best bet is to convert the data to ints so that all the numbers are uniform. I know you said you don't want to do that, but if you can, then it’s the best thing to do. Otherwise, you could do something like:
"SELECT * FROM `contacts` WHERE `phone` = '{$number}' OR `phone` = '{$number_with_dashes}'"
That is, search for the plain number OR the number with dashes.
1.
The easiest way to do it might be by using the REPLACE operator.
SELECT * FROM `contacts` WHERE REPLACE(REPLACE(`phone`, '-', ''), ' ', '') = '5550100';
What it does is simpy replacing all whitespaces and dashes with nothing, namely removing all spaces and dashes.
2.
Another alternative to solve the problem would be to use LIKE. If the phone numbers with a dash always are formatted the same way like 555-0100 and 555-0199 you can simple insert a %-sign instead of the dash. If your number may be formatted in different ways you can insert a %-between every character. It's not a beautiful solution but it does the trick.
SELECT * FROM `contacts` WHERE `phone` LIKE '555%0100';
or
SELECT * FROM `contacts` WHERE `phone` LIKE '5%5%5%0%1%0%0';
3.
You can use regular expressions. Since MySQL doesn't implement regex replace functions you need to use user defined functions. Have a look at https://launchpad.net/mysql-udf-regexp. It supports REGEXP_LIKE, REGEXP_SUBSTR, REGEXP_INSTR and REGEXP_REPLACE.
Edit: Removed my first answer and added some other alternatives.
I kept looking around for a solution, and eventually used MySQL's REPLACE function for that.
"SELECT * FROM `contacts` WHERE REPLACE(phone,'-','') = '{$number}'"

Wildcard mysql LIKE or IN array values issue

I have the following code block which explodes a string upon spaces.
$run = explode(" ",strtolower($q));
eg. "This is the string"
Array $run look like:
(This,is,the,string)
The problems im having are:
I only want to explode the string if it has a white, something equal as using php function str_word_count($q)>1.
Unsure on how to create a single query which will work with multiple words in string and search table using any of them.
$query = "SELECT name FROM `table1` WHERE name LIKE '%". mysql_real_escape_string($run[0]) ."%' OR name LIKE '%". mysql_real_escape_string($run[1]) ."%'";
Trying to simplyfy the above query making it smaller and variable in size based on word count. Is this also a good aproach to exploding the string then preparing the sql?
I've tried using IN as well on SQL query with no good luck.
You can use MySQL's MATCH . . . AGAINST . . . to perform this kind of search:
WHERE MATCH (name) AGAINST ('this is the string')
Consult the documentation for more information.
Original solution, not helpful in this situation:
You can check out the MySQL specific function FIND_IN_SET:
WHERE FIND_IN_SET(colname, 'This,is,the,string') > 0
The value in colname cannot contain a comma, however.

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