I have a field called 'areasCovered' in a MySQL database, which contains a string list of postcodes.
There are 2 rows that have similar data e.g:
Row 1: 'B*,PO*,WA*'
Row 2: 'BB*, SO*, DE*'
Note - The strings are not in any particular order and could change depending on the user
Now, if I was to use a query like:
SELECT * FROM technicians WHERE areasCovered LIKE '%B*%'
I'd like it to return JUST Row 1. However, it's returning Row 2 aswell, because of the BB* in the string.
How could I prevent it from doing this?
The key to using like in this case is to include delimiters, so you can look for delimited values:
SELECT *
FROM technicians
WHERE concat(', ', areasCovered, ', ') LIKE '%, B*, %'
In MySQL, you can also use find_in_set(), but the space can cause you problems so you need to get rid of it:
SELECT *
FROM technicians
WHERE find_in_set('B', replace(areasCovered, ', ', ',') > 0
Finally, though, you should not be storing these types of lists as strings. You should be storing them in a separate table, a junction table, with one row per technician and per area covered. That makes these types of queries easier to express and they have better performance.
You are searching wild cards at the start as well as end.
You need only at end.
SELECT * FROM technicians WHERE areasCovered LIKE 'B*%'
Reference:
Normally I hate REGEXP. But ho hum:
SELECT * FROM technicians
WHERE concat(",",replace(areasCovered,", ",",")) regexp ',B{1}\\*';
To explain a bit:
Get rid of the pesky space:
select replace("B*,PO*,WA*",", ",",");
Bolt a comma on the front
select concat(",",replace("B*,PO*,WA*",", ",","));
Use a REGEX to match "comma B once followed by an asterix":
select concat(",",replace("B*,PO*,WA*",", ",",")) regexp ',B{1}\\*';
I could not check it on my machine, but it's should work:
SELECT * FROM technicians WHERE areasCovered <> replace(areaCovered,',B*','whatever')
In case the 'B*' does not exist, the areasCovered will be equal to replace(areaCovered,',B*','whatever'), and it will reject that row.
In case the 'B*' exists, the areCovered will NOT be eqaul to replace(areaCovered,',B*','whatever'), and it will accept that row.
You can Do it the way Programming Student suggested
SELECT * FROM technicians WHERE areasCovered LIKE 'B*%'
Or you can also use limit on query
SELECT * FROM technicians WHERE areasCovered LIKE '%B*%' LIMIT 1
%B*% contains % on each side which makes it to return all the rows where value contains B* at any position of the text however your requirement is to find all the rows which contains values starting with B* so following query should do the work.
SELECT * FROM technicians WHERE areasCovered LIKE 'B*%'
Related
I want to count how many columns in a row are not NULL.
The table is quite big (more than 100 columns), therefore I would like to not do it manually or using php (since I dont use php) using this approach Counting how many MySQL fields in a row are filled (or empty).
Is there a simple query I can use in a select like SELECT COUNT(NOT ISNULL(*)) FROM big_table;
Thanks in advance...
Agree with comments above:
There is something wrong in the data since there is a need for such analysis.
You can't completely make it automatic.
But I have a recipe for you for simplifying the process. There are only 2 steps needed to achieve your aim.
Step 0. In the step1 you'll need to get the name of your table schema. Normally, the devs know in what schema does the table reside, but still... Here is how you can find it
select *
from information_schema.tables
where table_name = 'test_table';
Step 1. First of all you need to get the list of columns. Getting just the list of cols won't help you out at all, but this list is all we need to be able to create SELECT statement, right? So, let's make database to prepare select statement for us
select concat('select (length(concat(',
group_concat(concat('ifnull(', column_name, ', ''###'')') separator ','),
')) - length(replace(concat(',
group_concat(concat('ifnull(', column_name, ', ''###'')') separator ','),
'), ''###'', ''''))) / length(''###'')
from test_table')
from information_schema.columns
where table_schema = 'test'
and table_name = 'test_table'
order by table_name,ordinal_position;
Step 3. Execute statement you've got on step 2.
select (length(concat(.. list of cols ..)) -
length(replace(concat(.. list of cols .. ), '###', ''))) / length('###')
from test_table
The select looks tricky but it's simple: first replace all nulls with some symbols that you're sure you'll never get in those columns. I usually do that replacing nulls with "###". that what all that "ifnull"s are here for.
Next, count symbols with "length". In my case it was 14
After that, replace all "###" with blanks and count length again. It's 11 now. For that I was using "length(replace" functions together
Last, just divide (14 - 11) by a length of a replacement string ("###" - 3). You'll get 1. This is exactly amount of nulls in my test string.
Here's a test case you can play with
Do not hesitate to ask if needed
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 AB1,BC3
--------------------
As an input, I will get a CSV string, something like "AB,PQ". I want to get the records that contain AB or PQ. I realized that we've to write a MySQL function to achieve this. So, if we have this magical function MATCH_ANY defined in MySQL that does this, I would then simply execute an SQL as follows:
select * from ITEM where MATCH_ANY(FEAURES, "AB,PQ") = 0
The above query would return the records 1, 2 and 3.
But I'm running into all sorts of problems while implementing this function as I realized that MySQL doesn't support arrays and there's no simple way to split strings based on a delimiter.
Remodeling the table is the last option for me as it involves lot of issues.
I might also want to execute queries containing multiple MATCH_ANY functions such as:
select * from ITEM where MATCH_ANY(FEATURES, "AB,PQ") = 0 and MATCH_ANY(FEATURES, "CDE")
In the above case, we would get an intersection of records (1, 2, 3) and (3) which would be just 3.
Any help is deeply appreciated.
Thanks
First of all, the database should of course not contain comma separated values, but you are hopefully aware of this already. If the table was normalised, you could easily get the items using a query like:
select distinct i.Itemid
from Item i
inner join ItemFeature f on f.ItemId = i.ItemId
where f.Feature in ('AB', 'PQ')
You can match the strings in the comma separated values, but it's not very efficient:
select Id
from Item
where
instr(concat(',', Features, ','), ',AB,') <> 0 or
instr(concat(',', Features, ','), ',PQ,') <> 0
For all you REGEXP lovers out there, I thought I would add this as a solution:
SELECT * FROM ITEM WHERE FEATURES REGEXP '[[:<:]]AB|PQ[[:>:]]';
and for case sensitivity:
SELECT * FROM ITEM WHERE FEATURES REGEXP BINARY '[[:<:]]AB|PQ[[:>:]]';
For the second query:
SELECT * FROM ITEM WHERE FEATURES REGEXP '[[:<:]]AB|PQ[[:>:]]' AND FEATURES REGEXP '[[:<:]]CDE[[:>:]];
Cheers!
select *
from ITEM where
where CONCAT(',',FEAURES,',') LIKE '%,AB,%'
or CONCAT(',',FEAURES,',') LIKE '%,PQ,%'
or create a custom function to do your MATCH_ANY
Alternatively, consider using RLIKE()
select *
from ITEM
where ','+FEATURES+',' RLIKE ',AB,|,PQ,';
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
I tried something out. Here is a simple example in SQL Fiddle: Example
There is a column someNumbers (comma-seperated numbers) and I tried to get all the rows where this column contains a specific number. Problem is, the result only contains rows where someNumbers starts with the specific number.
The query SELECT * FROM myTable where 2 in ( someNumbers ) only returns the row with id 2 and not the row with id 1.
Any suggestions? Thank you all.
You are storing data in the wrong format! You should not be storing multiple values in a single string column. You should not be storing numbers as strings. Instead, you should have a junction table with one row per id and per number.
Sometimes, you just have no choice, because someone else created a really poorly designed database. For these situations, MySQL has the function find_in_set():
SELECT *
FROM myTable
WHERE find_in_set(2, someNumbers ) > 0;
The right solution, however, is to fix the data model.
While Gordon's answer is a good one, here is a way to do this with like
SELECT * FROM myTable where someNumbers like '2,%' or someNumbers like '%,2,%' or someNumbers like '%,2'
The first like checks if your array starts with the number you are looking for (2). The second one checks if 2 is within the array and the last like tests for appearance at the end.
Note that the commas are essential here, because something like '%2%' would also match ...,123,...
EDIT: As suggested by the OP it may happen that only a single value is present in the row. Consequently, the query must check this case by doing ... someNumbers = '2'
I would suggest this query :
SELECT * FROM myTable where someNumbers like '%2%'
It will select every entry where someNumbers contains '2'
Select * from table_name where coloumn_name IN(value,value,value)
you can use it
In MySQL we can use this code to select rows with ID numbers (or anything else) between a list:
SELECT * FROM TABLENAME WHERE prophrases IN (1,2,3,4,5,6)
Thats OK! but if we need to search a number in a Field's value, what we can do?
For example, I have a table with a field, named 'prophases' and I saved data like this:
rowid / prophases
1 / 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8
2 / 6,5,2,7,9,2
now, i need to check if a number like 6 is in prophrases in row #1 or not!
what can i do for that?
something like this but in correct form!
SELECT * FROM TABLENAME WHERE 6 IN prophrases
you should just use FIND_IN_SET()
SELECT rowid
FROM TABLENAME
WHERE FIND_IN_SET('6', prophrases)
This will work if you are only dealing with single digits
select * from tablename where prophrases like '%6%'
This will work if you are going to have number with more than one digit and there are no spaces between commas.
select * from tablename where prophrases like '%,6,%' or prophrases like '6,%' or prophrases like '%,6'
You need to use a like statement
SELECT * FROM TABLENAME WHERE prophrases LIKE '%6%'
However if you have multiple digit numbers that could cause some unexpected results, so you might have to amend it like
SELECT * FROM TABLENAME
WHERE prophrases LIKE '%,6,%'
OR prophrases LIKE '6,%'
OR prophrases LIKE '%,6'
The first part matches 6 in between commas, the second one matches a 6 at the beginning followed by a comma, the third matches a comma followed by a six a the end.
Storing data like that is not the best way of doing it. You are probably better off having another table that has a one-to-many relationship.
My table contains some columns with ;-separated numbers like this :
1;2;43;22;20;12
and so on. It's also possible there's only 1 number in this column like 110, or 2 numbers like this 110;143
I want to select the rows that contain a certain number in this column. The number is in a variable $search_var.
Let's say I need to search for the number 1 in my column. If I use a select with like statement like so :
"SELECT * FROM Table WHERE ids LIKE '%".$search_var."%'"
I get all results containing '1' and not only '1', so I also get 11, 14, 110, 1999 etc.
I think I need to use some sort of regex-statement but I'm lost here... Who can help ?
You might not need regex for this
Set #YourNUmber := 110;
SELECT *
FROM Table
WHERE ';' + ids + ';' LIKE '%;'+ #yourNumber + ';%'
This guarantees there are always ; surrounding all the numbers.
This is formatted for SQL Server. The variable syntax and wildcards might be different if you are using something else.
EDIT:
Thanks #FélixGagnon-Grenier for the suggestions. I think either of these two will work. See here for a SQL Fiddle example
SELECT *
FROM T
WHERE concat(';',ids,';') LIKE concat('%;', #YourNumber , ';%');
SELECT *
FROM T
WHERE LOCATE(concat(';', #YourNumber , ';'),concat(';',ids,';'))>0
Try this solution if you're using SQL Server. This searches for the number where adjcent characters are not numbers:
SELECT * FROM Table WHERE ids LIKE '%[^0-9]".$search_var."[^0-9]%'