Select only unique row/record in mysql

Question

I would like to see how I can get only unique row/records that have a unique city and not care if it\'s capital so for example:

Akron
akron
aKRON
         


        

Answer 1

It doesn't work on other DBMS, but in MySql you could use this:

SELECT city, state_prefix,lattitude,longitude
FROM zip_code WHERE city LIKE '$queryString%'
GROUP BY city
LIMIT 10

MySql ignores case when comparing strings, e.g. this returns true:

select 'hello'='Hello '

and you can also group by a single field (city in this case) and return all others field. Values of other fields are undetermined, they are usually the ones in the first row but you can't relay on that.