Question

I have a PHP interface with a keyword search, working off a DB(MySQL) which has a Keywords field.

The way in which the keywords field is set up is as follows, it is a varchar with all the words formatted as shown below…

the, there, theyre, their, thermal etc…

if i want to just return the exact word ‘the’ from the search how would this be achieved?

I have tried using 'the%' and '%the' in the PHP and it fails to work by not returning all of the rows where the keyword appears in.

is there a better (more accurate) way to go about this?

Thanks

Answer 1

If you want to select the rows that have exactly the keyword the:

SELECT * FROM table WHERE keyword=’the’

If you want to select the rows that have the keyword the anywhere in them:

SELECT * FROM table WHERE keyword LIKE ‘%the%’

If you want to select the rows that start with the keyword the:

SELECT * FROM table WHERE keyword LIKE ‘the%’

If you want to select the rows that end with the keyword the:

SELECT * FROM table WHERE keyword LIKE ‘%the’