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Asked: 2026-06-17T16:43:27+00:00

I’m working on a search feature to search for model numbers and I’m trying

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I’m working on a search feature to search for model numbers and I’m trying to get MySQL to show me results similar to what I’m asking for but LIKE %$var% doesn’t do it.

Example (we’ll call table, “tbl_models”):

    id           model
+-------+--------------------+
|   1   |    DV6233SE        |
|   2   |    Studio 1440     |
|   3   |    C762NR          |
+-------+--------------------+

When searching using a search box I’m currently using:

SELECT id, model FROM tbl_models WHERE model LIKE %$var% ORDER BY id DESC

If I search for “C7” it’ll return “C762NR” which is fine, but say I were to search for “C760” or “C700” or a typo of “C726NR”? Is there a way in MySQL (or PHP, JS, jQuery) that I can expand the limit of what results are returned to include different variations or close matches?

I’m not looking for someone to write it for me either, just a push in the right direction would be very helpful!

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    If I were to apply logic for your question, I will go this way.

    To find close matches –

    I will take input parameter originally typed by user. e.g. ‘ABCDEF’
    Then I will create multiple parameters from it by replacing each character in input parameter by ‘_’.

    I.e. ‘ABCDEF’ will produce following input parameters for me.

    ‘_BCDEF’ , ‘A_CDEF’, ‘AB_DEF’, ‘ABC_EF’, ‘ABCD_F’, ‘ABCDE_’

    Then I will pass input parameters to SQL query and use OR operation to find data.

    Above approach will give me words differing by 1 characters.

    I can extend this a bit by replacing 2 characters with UNDERSCORE, then 3 characters then 4 and so on.

    Upto how many characters I have to replace, should depend on the length of string.

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