Question

my mysql table contains an entry

Foo Bar 

(i.e will potentially include capitals and whitespace)

I need search the DB using the string ‘foobar’ and match this

foobar is generated originally from the DB using:

$i = str_replace(' ','',$i);
$i = preg_replace("/[^A-Za-z0-9]/", "", $i);
$i = strtolower($i);

Answer 1

If only spaces are the problem, and your collation is case-insensitive:

WHERE REPLACE(tn.fieldname,' ','') LIKE 'foobar';

if your collation is case-sensitive:

WHERE LOWER(REPLACE(tn.fieldname,' ','')) LIKE LOWER('foobar');

It will however result in a full-table scan, so not a great performance. Normalizing fieldname to what you are searching for, or another column with a normalized fieldname would perform better, especially with an index on it.