How Can I Efficiently Search for Multiple Strings Within a MySQL Column?

Use MySQL’s find_in_set function to find multiple strings

MySQL’s find_in_set() function allows you to search for a specific string within a set of strings stored in a column. However, it can only search using a single search string.

Challenge: Search using multiple strings

You may encounter situations where you need to search for multiple strings within a set of strings. For example, you might want to check whether a customer purchased a specific product that belongs to a specific category. In this case, just using find_in_set() is not enough.

Tip of simulating find_in_set() to implement multi-string search

There is a workaround to simulate a multi-string search using find_in_set():

1. Add commas to the beginning and end of columns containing sets of strings. This ensures that the set is surrounded by commas.
2. Use regular expressions (REGEX) to search for patterns containing search strings separated by pipe symbols (|). The pipe character represents a logical OR, matching any string.

Regular expression description:

• "," - matches a comma at the beginning of a collection.
• setcolumn - The name of the column containing the set of strings.
• "," - matches the comma at the end of the set.
• ," - matches a comma followed by a double quote.
• (val1|val2|val3) - Pipe-delimited search string, enclosed in parentheses.
• ," - matches a comma followed by a double quote.

Example:

Consider the following query:

SELECT *
FROM table
WHERE CONCAT(",", `product_set`, ",") REGEXP ",(electronics|clothing|accessories),";

In this query, the product_set column contains a comma-separated list of products purchased by the customer. The REGEXP expression checks whether the collection contains any of these three search strings: "electronics", "clothing", or "accessories".

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