Question

I have names in the database like

tést

The Autocomplete works fine and all and if I seach for it like this:

WHERE title LIKE '%tèst%'

It works fine. But now i also want to find this entry if the user enters

test

(without the accent). In most cases its fine as autocomplete fixes the user up, but of course not always. How can I change the query so that the needle “test” also finds “tést” (other way round does not matter)?

Answer 1

This works for me.

I tested this on MySQL 5.5.8 using utf8 charset and utf8_general_ci collation.

I tried searching for where title like '%tèst%' and where title like '%test%', and both queries returned both “tèst” and “test”, which seems like what you want.

Does it not work like this for you?

mysql> create table french (
    -> title text
    -> ) default charset = utf8, default collate = utf8_general_ci;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.13 sec)

mysql> 
mysql> insert into french values ('tèst');
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> insert into french values ('test');
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> insert into french values ('toast');
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> 
mysql> select * from french where title like '%tèst%';
+-------+
| title |
+-------+
| tèst  |
| test  |
+-------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> select * from french where title like '%test%';
+-------+
| title |
+-------+
| tèst  |
| test  |
+-------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)