Question

I have an sql table which contains data with special characters for my language (Slovak), for example:

 id | name
 1    František
 2    Ján
 3    Júlia

Now, I need to run a search on this table (SELECT … %string%), where while searching for julia it should match Júlia, or even generally, ju should find Júlia.

My database already is case insensitive, I just need to make it ignore those special characters.

How would I do this?

Answer 1

Try

select * from t
where name like 'Julia' collate utf8_unicode_ci

You can use a different collation in your selects.
You can see what collations your installation supports by

SELECT COLLATION_NAME FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLLATIONS

SQLFiddle example
MySQL Collations