MySQL Python LIKE wildcard

Question

I want to do a Python MySQL query such as:

cursor = connection.cursor()
sql = "select text \
       from steps \
       where text like '%start%'"
cursor.execute(sql)

But the % isn't seen as a wildcard, it's expecting a variable, I guess. I get an error:

TypeError: not enough arguments for format string

Nothing seems to work. It would also be nice if I could use a variable instead of '%start%'

Answer 1

I assume you're using python db-api.

You can try escaping % as %%.

As for passing the parameters there is a number of ways, for example:

cursor = connection.cursor()
sql = """select text 
   from steps 
   where text like %s"""
cursor.execute(sql, (('%' + 'start' + '%',))

You can see examples of the other ways of parameter passing on this blog in "Interface modułu" section. Not all of them work with all connectors.