What are the best practices for handling search queries that involve partial matches in PHP and MySQL?

When handling search queries that involve partial matches in PHP and MySQL, it is best to use the LIKE operator in your SQL query along with wildcard characters (%) to match any part of the search term. Additionally, it is recommended to sanitize user input to prevent SQL injection attacks. 

// Assume $searchTerm is the user input for the search query
$searchTerm = $_POST['searchTerm'];

// Sanitize the user input
$searchTerm = mysqli_real_escape_string($connection, $searchTerm);

// Perform the query with partial match using LIKE operator
$query = "SELECT * FROM table_name WHERE column_name LIKE '%$searchTerm%'";
$result = mysqli_query($connection, $query);

// Loop through the results and display them
while ($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result)) {
    // Display the search results
}

Keywords

PHP MySQL search queries partial matches handling

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