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Trying to filter the results after a query. Need to find a string inside of a tinytext string. That looks like: accounting, ACT, algebra 1, algebra 2, American history, biology, calculus, economics, English, European history, geometry, grammar, literature, piano, proofreading, psychology, reading, SAT math, SAT reading, SAT writing, statistics, violin, vocabulary,

Code - subject string to find is $subject and the list to search is $row['SubjectList']

$result = mysql_query($query, $dbConn);
$i=0;
while ($row = @mysql_fetch_assoc($result)){
    $results[$i]['Name'] = $row['Name'];
    $results[$i]['Zip'] = $row['ZipCode'];
    $results[$i]['SubjectList'] = $row['SubjectList'];
    $i++;
}
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2 Answers

up vote 1 down vote accepted

you are doing it completely the wrong way.

  1. Such a filtering should be done on the DB side, not in PHP.
  2. These subjects should not be stored like that but in separate fields in a relational table.
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just trying to work with what I have... can't move to a relational table and also the query is super complicated and I've posted 2 on how to add this search to it, but no one has given a working solution... so i'm trying to filter with conditionals after the fact... they have to go into an array anyway. can you help with current problem? – Jeffrey Apr 10 '11 at 8:37
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up vote 0 down vote

While I agree with Col. Shrapnels answer, in your specific case you are looking for the strpos function if you really want to do it in PHP

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I've tried the strpos and also explode and they return lots of empty $results. – Jeffrey Apr 10 '11 at 8:44
Can you update your question with the information of what you have tried and what failed? – ChrisWue Apr 10 '11 at 8:51
figured it out at the db query... had to remove sprintf – Jeffrey Apr 10 '11 at 9:15
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