I have a table containing free-form phone numbers (e.g. '123-456-7890', '(987) 654-3210', or '123.456.7890') and I'm searching them with a numeric string- e.g., '123456'.
Right now, I'm having to do a bunch of replace(replace(replace(.. ad nauseum functions to strip out errant non-numeric characters then use that 'LIKE' the search value to search.
Anyone know of a simpler way to select only certain characters from a field based on type, not position?
You can use regex in MySQL -
SELECT *
FROM `table`
WHERE `phone` REGEXP '^[12345]'
Here is a working example.
try using regexes. if you want to extarct numbers from a string you can use this:
$string = '123-456-7890';
preg_match_all('/\d+/', $string, $matches);
echo $matches; //will result in only digits
Try splitting up the number into three different values, i.e.
$first = '124';
$second= '456';
$third = '7890';
"WHERE (phone_number LIKE '%$first%' and LIKE '%$second%' and LIKE '%$third%')"
I'm not certain this is as effective as SQL's REGEXP, but it should work since every part is sectioned out. May not work if a number is like this in the db:1245667890 because you can find 124,456, and 7890, but the number does not match. This answer assumes there will never be a solid number.