wildcard not being acknowledged...

[CaptainComedy]

Hey guys, Im in a bit of a pickle here and was wondering if you could explain to me why the wildcard isnt working....

I have a form which posts information to this script (only basic info)

$username = $_POST['username'];
$username = mysql_real_escape_string($username);


$query4 = ("select * from gbob_reservedwords where reserved like '%$username%'");
$result4 = mysql_query($query4) or die ("couldnt get reserved word!");
$numrows4 = mysql_num_rows($result4);
		
if ($numrows4 >> 0)
{
$errors = $errors + 1;
$user_nameerror = 1;
}

at the end of this, if there $errors variable is greater than 0 - revert back to the form and give out an error message

My problem is the query checks the database and if the reserved word exactly matched $"username" it outputs an error

but say for example the reserved word was fella and the user put in "fella1" then the results find nothing, basically - the wildcard is completely ignored. Initially I thought it was something to do with mysql_real_escape_string($username) but even without it - I still get the same problem :/

Anyone got any ideas?

 

[CaptainComedy]

anyone? Im assuming its something petty but I been staring at it all day and its turned into one of those tunnel vision scenarios...

 

[Pho]

First, use > 0 rather than >> 0.

Also, try doing an echo $query4 and seeing what it's executing.

 

[CaptainComedy]

ok I see the problem so there's half the task

simple: say for example the reserved word was "steven" if the user put in "steven1" the record wouldnt be found because its looking for "%steven1%" I need it to find "steven"

I guess one way would be to query the reserved words table and while its doing each, do an if statement to compare the input text with each reserved word thought there would have been a better way though...

 

[Pho]

Wildcard works by matching whatever the user has entered within a list of values - so technically entering steven1 shouldn't match against steven .

You're probably best off doing this:
In PHP, select all bad words from the database and do a foreach on them. Then check if the inputted string ($username) contains any of those words. If it does break the loop and return error. This fixes the steven1 -> steven scenario, because you're now checking whether steven1 contains steven, not steven contains steven1.