Question

I’m updating a web page search form. The user selects the group names they want to search for. And on the action page, lets say for simplicity sake, I end up with the following query:

select GroupName
from    groupTable 
where groupName in ('Motley Crue','Alvin and the Chipmunks')

Normally, this isn’t a problem for me but in this case, the database field may also contain a string of names such as:

Big Dog's Chair,Purple Dragon,Just Johnny,Johnny Faster,Van Halen

I believe I will have to loop over each item in the database field with each item in my comma delimited list. If that is the case, I do not know how to do this and I don’t know what search terms to use in SO or google. I could use some help.

Database: MSSQL 2005
Coldfusion: CF9

I leave work in a at 5:00CST so if you reply, I probably wont see it until tomorrow.

Answer 1

this wouldn’t be as ideal as separating them out into multiple columns, but you could do

select GroupName
from groupTable 
where (groupName like '%Motley Crue%'
 or groupname like '%Alvin and the Chipmunks%'
)