Question

I need to find rows that contain a specific number in a set of numeric values that are stored in a table. I’m using the WHERE IN() function of mysql, but I’m having problems with the proper format.

Basically I have the following query:

SELECT id,category, text
FROM ws_cat
WHERE '11' IN (category) 

The category field is a VARCHAR and looks like the following:

id    category
1     11
2     12,11
3     1,13,9

So I need to find the rows with id 1 and 2 in this case. Unfortunately it doesn’t work and I’m guessing it’s because of the missing quotes, but all the ideas of reformating with QUOTES() or just changing the format of category to something like '12','11' wouldn’t work either. Both would be possible for me as long as it works…

Answer 1

Use the FIND_IN_SET function:

SELECT id, category, text
    FROM ws_cat
    WHERE FIND_IN_SET('11', category) <> 0;