MySQL - LIKE Clause

We have seen the SQL SELECT command to fetch data from the MySQL table. We can also use a conditional clause called as the WHERE clause to select the required records.
A WHERE clause with the ‘equal to’ sign (=) works fine where we want to do an exact match. Like if "tutorial_author = 'Sanjay'". But there may be a requirement where we want to filter out all the results where tutorial_author name should contain "jay". This can be handled using SQL LIKE Clause along with the WHERE clause.
If the SQL LIKE clause is used along with the % character, then it will work like a meta character (*) as in UNIX, while listing out all the files or directories at the command prompt. Without a % character, the LIKE clause is very same as the equal to sign along with the WHERE clause.
The following code block has a generic SQL syntax of the SELECT command along with the LIKE clause to fetch data from a MySQL table.
SELECT field1, field2,...fieldN table_name1, table_name2...
WHERE field1 LIKE condition1 [AND [OR]] filed2 = 'somevalue'

You can specify any condition using the WHERE clause.
You can specify any condition using the WHERE clause.
You can use the LIKE clause along with the WHERE clause.
You can use the LIKE clause along with the WHERE clause.
You can use the LIKE clause in place of the equals to sign.
You can use the LIKE clause in place of the equals to sign.
When LIKE is used along with % sign then it will work like a meta character search.
When LIKE is used along with % sign then it will work like a meta character search.
You can specify more than one condition using AND or OR operators.
You can specify more than one condition using AND or OR operators.
A WHERE...LIKE clause can be used along with DELETE or UPDATE SQL command also to specify a condition.
A WHERE...LIKE clause can be used along with DELETE or UPDATE SQL command also to specify a condition.
This will use the SQL SELECT command with the WHERE...LIKE clause to fetch the selected data from the MySQL table – tutorials_tbl.
The following example will return all the records from the tutorials_tbl table for which the author name ends with jay −
root@host# mysql -u root -p password;
Enter password:*******
mysql> use TUTORIALS;
Database changed
mysql> SELECT * from tutorials_tbl 
   -> WHERE tutorial_author LIKE '%jay';
+-------------+----------------+-----------------+-----------------+
| tutorial_id | tutorial_title | tutorial_author | submission_date |
+-------------+----------------+-----------------+-----------------+
|      3      |  JAVA Tutorial |     Sanjay      |    2007-05-21   |   
+-------------+----------------+-----------------+-----------------+
1 rows in set (0.01 sec)

mysql>
PHP uses mysqli query() or mysql_query() function to select records in a MySQL table using Like clause. This function takes two parameters and returns TRUE on success or FALSE on failure.
$mysqli->query($sql,$resultmode)

$sql
Required - SQL query to select records in a MySQL table using Like Clause.
$resultmode
Optional - Either the constant MYSQLI_USE_RESULT or MYSQLI_STORE_RESULT depending on the desired behavior. By default, MYSQLI_STORE_RESULT is used.
Try the following example to select a record using like clause in a table −
Copy and paste the following example as mysql_example.php −
<html>
   <head>
      <title>Using Like Clause</title>
   </head>
   <body>
      <?php
         $dbhost = 'localhost';
         $dbuser = 'root';
         $dbpass = 'root@123';
         $dbname = 'TUTORIALS';
         $mysqli = new mysqli($dbhost, $dbuser, $dbpass, $dbname);
         
         if($mysqli->connect_errno ) {
            printf("Connect failed: %s<br />", $mysqli->connect_error);
            exit();
         }
         printf('Connected successfully.<br />');
   
         $sql = 'SELECT tutorial_id, tutorial_title, tutorial_author, submission_date 
            FROM tutorials_tbl where tutorial_author like "Mah%"';
		 
         $result = $mysqli->query($sql);
           
         if ($result->num_rows > 0) {
            while($row = $result->fetch_assoc()) {
               printf("Id: %s, Title: %s, Author: %s, Date: %d <br />", 
                  $row["tutorial_id"], 
                  $row["tutorial_title"], 
                  $row["tutorial_author"],
                  $row["submission_date"]);               
            }
         } else {
            printf('No record found.<br />');
         }
         mysqli_free_result($result);
         $mysqli->close();
      ?>
   </body>
</html>
Access the mysql_example.php deployed on apache web server and verify the output. Here we've entered multiple records in the table before running the select script.
Connected successfully.
Id: 1, Title: MySQL Tutorial, Author: Mahesh, Date: 2021
Id: 2, Title: HTML Tutorial, Author: Mahesh, Date: 2021
Id: 3, Title: PHP Tutorial, Author: Mahesh, Date: 2021


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