Question

I am trying to fetch records in MySQL using a simple used submitted field. More precisely, the user inputs a name (firstname or lastname or fullname) and the server should return matched rows.

What I am doing so far is something like:

SELECT * FROM people 
WHERE 
   firstname LIKE '%user_submitted_data%' OR 
   lastname LIKE '%user_submitted_data%'

That works well for now, but that (obviously) won’t work when a user submits the fullname. Is there a way to add a OR between the whole ‘WHERE type conditions’ and the ‘HAVING type conditions’? This way I could do something like:

SELECT [some fields], CONCAT(firstname, ' ', 'lastname') as fullname 
FROM people 
WHERE 
   firstname LIKE '%user_submitted_data%' OR 
   lastname LIKE '%user_submitted_data%' OR 
   HAVING fullname LIKE '%user_submitted_data%'

I know I could just split the original string but that has some negative impact since you have to deal with names containing spaces such as ‘De Gaule’ and stuff like that.

Answer 1

Do a subquery:

SELECT [some fields]
FROM
  SELECT firstname, lastname, CONCAT(firstname, ' ', lastname) as fullname
  FROM people) AS tmp
WHERE firstname LIKE '%user_submitted_data%'
OR lastname LIKE '%user_submitted_data%'
OR fullname LIKE '%user_submitted_data%'