I want to find a value in an sql row. But I want it to select from any part of the row. For instance:
SELECT * FROM posts WHERE everything = cake
And then I want it to find cheesecake, because it has the value cake in it
If you mean have the query select a row that has a particular single field with a value of “cheesecake” returned because it has the substring “cake”, that can be done by using wildcards. eg.
WHERE field LIKE '%cake%'
If you mean more than a single field, I know of no way to do this without doing each possible field. eg. if there was a row like
firstname - lastname - county - city
Robert - Robertson - Robertshire - Robertville
and you wanted to find “Rob” in any of the four fields, the query would need to be like
WHERE firstname LIKE '%Rob%'
OR lastname LIKE '%Rob%'
OR county LIKE '%Rob%'
OR city LIKE '%Rob%'
Repetitive I know, but that’s how it would be done. Note that using wildcards - especially leading wildcards - can impact performance. So you may want to have those fields indexed and even then I think keeping the wildcard use to a minimum would be a good idea.
Check your query with an EXPLAIN to see if it triggers a full table scan.
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Another way (no idea about the performance).
select * from book where concat(year, author, title) like '%something%'
And yet another way is to use full text search.
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