Like clause with active record

Rails
1

I am trying to use a like clause with my rails app but am having some
problems. I have tried

customers = Customer.find(:all, :conditions => [“name LIKE ?”,
%some_variable%])

i have also tried

customers = Customer.find_by_sql("where name LIKE ‘%some_variable%’)

and

customers = Customer.find_by_sql(“SELECT * FROM customers WHERE name
LIKE ‘some_variable’”)

The top 2 queries return results but not the results i would expect if
some_variable is james i get about 100 rows returned with all sorts of
names not just james

Can anyone help suggest what i’m doing wrong or point me in the right
direction?

2

You missed Customer.find(:all, :conditions => [“name LIKE ?”,
“%#{some_variable}%”])

3

I think you’ll find that you only need to use #{variable} when the
variable is inside quotations. This problem is not one of using the
correct rails syntax in this instance but thanks for the reply

4

On 10/8/07, dodgyboz [email protected] wrote:

I think you’ll find that you only need to use #{variable} when the
variable is inside quotations. This problem is not one of using the
correct rails syntax in this instance but thanks for the reply

No, andrewbruce gave you the proper solution. Look closely at what he
showed you.

5

When using the LIKE modifier in Mysql, the % matches one or more
characters and the _ match a single character. Hence the
“%#{some_variable}%” would match anything containing the value of
some_variable.

-Bill

dodgyboz wrote:

direction?

–
Sincerely,

William P.