Searching a column containing CSV data in a MySQL table for existence of input values

Question

I have a table say, ITEM, in MySQL that stores data as follows:

ID    FEATURES
--------------------
1     AB,CD,EF,XY
2     PQ,AC,A3,B3
3     AB,CDE
4     AB         


        

Answer 1

Just a thought:

Does it have to be done in SQL? This is the kind of thing you might normally expect to write in PHP or Python or whatever language you're using to interface with the database.

This approach means you can build your query string using whatever complex logic you need and then just submit a vanilla SQL query, rather than trying to build a procedure in SQL.

Ben