CakePHP find query using %like% with spaces - mysql

Question

I'm trying to query a page based on either a category ID or sub category name.
The variable $cat will either have an integer or varchar grabbed from my database.
I've been using cakephp 1.3 with a sql find all articles with a category of $cat OR sub-category LIKE $cat
It works great but a problem arises when $cat has a space between words, "google forms".
I've looked through this site and tried a number of methods with no luck. Appreciate any advice.
Here's my controller routines:
$cat = Sanitize::escape($cat);
$cat = trim($cat);
$title_a = str_replace($cat, "%".$cat."%", $cat);
$a_t = str_replace('"', $title_a, $title_a);
//var_dump($cat);
if(!empty($cat))
{
$sqlConditions = array('OR'=>array('Article.categories LIKE' => $a_t, 'Article.event_category_id' => $cat));
$sqlParams = array('conditions'=>$sqlConditions);
$catdata=$this->Article->find('all',$sqlParams);
return $catdata;
}
I've tried many different alternatives:
RLIKE instead of LIKE
Different query using MATCH
$sqlConditions = array(
'OR' => array(
'MATCH(Article.categories AGAINST(? IN BOOLEAN MODE)' => $cat,
'MATCH(Article.event_category_id) AGAINST(? IN BOOLEAN MODE)' => $cat
)
);
$sqlConditions = array('OR'=>array('Article.categories LIKE' => "%".$cat."%", 'Article.event_category_id' => $cat));

Answer 1

I think a decent solution would be to remove all of the spaces and make the characters of $cat lower case.
$likeCat = strtolower(str_replace(' ', '', trim($cat)));
$sqlConditions = array(
'OR'=> array(
'LOWER(REPLACE(Article.categories, ' ', ''))' => $likeCat,
'Article.event_category_id' => $cat
)
);