PHP LIKE Statement

[jmfillman]

I'm quite new to PHP and trying to understand and modify some sample code I received to include a LIKE search. This code always returns the entire "users" table. Everything but this piece of the code [b][color=red]LIKE '%$ptSearchFirstName%'[/color][/b]  is exactly the same as the working sample code I received.

public function ptSearch() {
# Return a list of all the 'flextest' users
if (!$result=$this->mysqli->query("SELECT * from users WHERE username LIKE '%$ptSearchFirstName%'")) {
$msg=$this->err_prefix."SELECT query error: ".$this->mysqli->error;
$this->mysqli->close();
  throw new Exception($msg);
}
while ($row = $result->fetch_assoc()) {
$user_array[] = $row;
}
return($user_array);
}

[btherl]

"WHERE username LIKE '%$ptSearchFirstName%'" will give you all users whose username has $ptSearchFirstName as a substring.  The '%' means "match any string".  So it translates to "Match anything followed by $ptSearchFirstName followed by anything".

It's actually Mysql code, not php code, but mysql is used often with php.

If $ptSearchFirstName is empty, then it will return all users, since it'll just be "LIKE '%%'", and % matches anything.