How to select results from a MySQL DB using Strpos instead of a While statement?

I开发者_JS百科 have been using the PHP function strpos to find results containing the characters of a string from a DB:

User Types: Hel
Results: Hello, Hell, Helli, Hella

I have it basically query the entire table:

$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM Events");

And then ran a while statement to see which of the results contain the characters of the input:

while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
 {

    $pos = strpos($row['Title'], $q);
        if ($pos === false) {
        } else {
            echo $row['Title'];
        }
  }

And to find the number of results, I was using:

$n = $n++

Inside of the while statement.

I know you can use:

$num_rows = mysql_num_rows($result);

To find the number of results if you are only selecting those values from the database, but do I have to use this while statement to find the number of results that match the strpos function? Or can I put the strpos in to the Select From query?

Any help is greatly appreciated,

Taylor

---

This seems highly inefficient. Why wouldn't you simply let the database do the searching for you?

$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM Events WHERE Title LIKE '" . addslashes($q) . "%'");

Then just loop through the results.

---

You could update your SQL to something like

SELECT * 
FROM Events
WHERE Title LIKE '{your_string}%'

Make sure to filter for sql injection though.

---

You can use the LIKE statement:

SELECT * FROM Events WHERE field1 LIKE '%something%'

Where the special % characters say "Anything of any length"; so we're searching for something (or nothing), then the string, then something (or nothing.) For example, searching for %f% will match foo, off, and affirmative.

Just as general advice, I recommend that you use php's MySQLi class; it's an improved version (hence the i), and provides prepared statements, so you won't have to worry too much about SQL injections.