php - MySQL diacritic insensitive search (spanish accents)

Question

I have a MySQL database with words containing accents in Spanish (áéíóú). I'd like to know if there's any way to do a diacritic insensitive search. For instance, if I search for "lapiz" (without accent), i'd like to get results containing the word "lápiz" from my db. The way I'm currently doing the query is as follows:

$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM $lookuptable WHERE disabled = '0' AND name LIKE '%$q%' OR productCode LIKE '%$q%' LIMIT $sugglimit");

This is for an online store, so I don't know what people will be searching for... "lapiz" is just and example.

alt text http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/0e7c2ae7d5.png

Thanks!

Answer 1

Character sets & collations, not my favorites, but they DO work:

mysql> SET NAMES latin1;
mysql> SELECT 'lápiz' LIKE 'lapiz';
+-----------------------+
| 'lápiz' LIKE 'lapiz' |
+-----------------------+
|                     0 | 
+-----------------------+
1 row in set (0.01 sec)

mysql> SET NAMES utf8;
mysql> SELECT 'lápiz' LIKE 'lapiz';
+-----------------------+
| 'lápiz' LIKE 'lapiz' |
+-----------------------+
|                     1 | 
+-----------------------+


mysql> SET NAMES latin1;
mysql> SELECT _utf8'lápiz' LIKE _utf8'lapiz' ;
+---------------------------------+
| _utf8'lápiz' LIKE _utf8'lapiz' |
+---------------------------------+
|                               1 | 
+---------------------------------+

A nice chapter to read in the manual:Character Set Support