SQL LIKE wildcard space character

Question

let\'s say I have a string in which the words are separated by 1 or more spaces and I want to use that string in and SQL LIKE condition. How do I make my SQL and tell it to

Answer 1

if the condition:

WHERE myField LIKE '%Hello world%'

doesn't work try

WHERE myField LIKE '%Hello%' 

and

WHERE myField LIKE '%world%'

this approach is helpful in a few specific use cases, hope this helps.

Answer 2

I know this is late, but I never found a solution to this in relation to a LIKE question.

There is no way to do what you're wanting within a SQL LIKE. What you would have to do is use REGEXP and [[:space:]] inside your expression.

So to find one or more spaces between two words..

WHERE col REGEXP 'firstword[[:space:]]+secondword'

Answer 3

I just replace the whitespace chars with '%'. Lets say I want to do a LIKE query on a string like this 'I want to query this string with a LIKE'

@search_string = 'I want to query this string with a LIKE'
@search_string = ("%"+@search_string+"%").tr(" ", "%")
@my_query = MyTable.find(:all, :conditions => ['my_column LIKE ?', @search_string])

first I add the '%' to the start and end of string with

("%"+@search_string+"%")

and then replace other remaining whitespace chars with '%' like so

.tr(" ", "%")