A few months ago, I came across this little MySQL function while working on a site, and I assumed that everyone knew about it and I'd just been ignorant, but since my discovery I've yet to find someone else who knew about it. So, I thought I'd share!

Say you have a messaging system that allows for multiple users, and stores the message participants in a CSV in the column `users` (Ex: 1,4,16,18). How would you usually see if the current user is in that list?

You'd grab the `users` list, explode() it, and loop through the array to see if it matched the cookie...well not anymore!

SELECT * FROM messages WHERE FIND_IN_SET($_COOKIE['user'], users)

For those of you who didn't know about this gem, enjoy!

For those of you who did know, shame on you for not sharing.

interesting, well this might actually helps solve a problem I've been having.

Seems handy!
I might have a use for it in my current job!

speaking of jobs, marc, or michael, either of you wanting to make a little money XD Na I think I can manage, just getting bored of coding XD

I code 9-5 every day. I have a freelance client lined up, a project for someone, and improvements to do to wImg... I'm fully booked!

I probably wouldn't explode, I'd use some kind of RegEx

SELECT * FROM messages WHERE `users` REGEXP '(^|,)ID_HERE(,|$)'

Handy to know though. I have used a MySQL function (which I forget the name of now) to do the opposite - check if the value in the database is one of a set list (in fact I think vForums uses it in a couple of places)

XD yea well i tend not to use a lot of fancy coding, which is why i dont mind highering someone to look over my coding and do some editing to make it more secure and faster XD as for calling information, i think the most extreme i've done is:

"SELECT * FROM random WHERE random_type='random'" or using escape() within an sql query XD