Search for string within text column in MySQL

I have mysql table that has a column that stores xml as a string. I need to find all tuples where the xml column contains a given string of 6 characters. Nothing else matters--all I need to know is if this 6 character string is there or not.

So it probably doesn't matter that the text is formatted as xml.

Question: how can I search within mysql? ie SELECT * FROM items WHERE items.xml [contains the text '123456']

Is there a way I can use the LIKE operator to do this?

You could probably use the http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/string-comparison-functions.html">`LIKE` clause to do some simple string matching:

SELECT * FROM items WHERE items.xml LIKE '%123456%'

If you need more advanced functionality, take a look at MySQL's fulltext-search functions here: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/fulltext-search.html">http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/fulltext-search.html</a>

Using like might take longer time so use full_text_search:

SELECT * FROM items WHERE MATCH(items.xml) AGAINST ('your_search_word')

SELECT * FROM items WHERE `items.xml` LIKE '%123456%'

The % operator in LIKE means "anything can be here".

Why not use LIKE?

SELECT * FROM items WHERE items.xml LIKE '%123456%'

you mean:

SELECT * FROM items WHERE items.xml LIKE '%123456%'

When you are using the wordpress prepare line, the above solutions do not work. This is the solution I used:

   $Table_Name    = $wpdb->prefix.'tablename';
   $SearchField = '%'. $YourVariable . '%';	  
   $sql_query     = $wpdb->prepare("SELECT * FROM $Table_Name WHERE ColumnName LIKE %s", $SearchField) ;
 $rows = $wpdb->get_results($sql_query, ARRAY_A);