Question

I need to use the LIKE keyword or some other similar operator for this purpose:

In the database, the name and surname is stored as one column and it’s in the order surname name (e.g. “Doe John”).

I have a search bar with lets you enter your name and surname. When I am going to search, I require that if you enter name surname instead of surname name (e.g. if you enter “John Doe”), I still want the same results to show up as if you had written surname name.

How can I achieve this?

Answer 1

If your table is MyISAM, you can create a FULLTEXT index on both fields:

CREATE FULLTEXT INDEX ON mytable (name, surname)

and issue this query:

SELECT  *
FROM    mytable
WHERE   MATCH(name, surname) AGAINST ('+John +Doe' IN BOOLEAN MODE)

This will return both John Doe and Doe John.

On a MyISAM table this query will work even without creating the index, however, in this case it will be much more slow.

Update:

This will work even if you have name and surname in a single field:

CREATE TABLE t_name (id INT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY, name VARCHAR(200) NOT NULL) ENGINE=MyISAM;

INSERT
INTO    t_name
VALUES
(1, 'John Doe'),
(2, 'Doe John');

SELECT  *
FROM    t_name
WHERE   MATCH(name) AGAINST ('+John +Doe' IN BOOLEAN MODE);

1, 'John Doe'
2, 'Doe John'

Update 2:

On an InnoDB table, you can use regular expressions:

SELECT  *
FROM    t_name
WHERE   name RLIKE '[[:<:]]John[[:>:]]'
        AND name RLIKE '[[:<:]]Doe[[:>:]]'