ensuring search lowercase characters

How do I search lower case in MySQL?

I have the f开发者_JAVA百科ollowing

$sql = "SELECT * FROM TABLE_NAME WHERE column LIKE '%$search%'";

How do I make sure the values in "column" are matched to lowercase?

You should either set your column's collation to a case-sensitive one, like UTF8_BIN, or make an additional check in the filter:

SELECT  *
FROM    table_name
WHERE   column LIKE '%$search$%'
        AND column COLLATE UTF8_BIN = LOWER(column COLLATE UTF8_BIN)

Note that if your collation is case-insensitive, like UTF8_GENERAL_CI, then the following query:

SELECT  LOWER('A') = ('A')

will return true. You should explicitly coerce your column to a case-insensitive collation before doing a comparison.

Assuming I'm interpreting correctly, use the MySQL LOWER() function:

$sql = "SELECT * FROM TABLE_NAME WHERE LOWER(column) LIKE '%$search%'";

This will convert everything in column to lowercase before testing it against the search value.