MYSQL query for searching through ALL the fields?

Question

As dumb as it sounds, is there a way to do something like this:

select row_id from mytable where * like '%searched_text%';

By * here I mean "all the fields" in the table, instead of me specifying them one by one...

Answer 1

It is not possible with one query.

However when you do:

DESCRIBE table_name;

you get the field names which you can generate the query from.

Search in all fields from every table of a MySQL database May be useful.

Answer 2

Here's a solution combined with some PHP to search all fields in a specific table.

include("db_con.php");
//search all fields
$searchphrase = "banan";
$table = "apa303";
$sql_search = "select * from ".$table." where ";
$sql_search_fields = Array();
$sql = "SHOW COLUMNS FROM ".$table;
$rs = mysql_query($sql);
    while($r = mysql_fetch_array($rs)){
        $colum = $r[0];
        $sql_search_fields[] = $colum." like('%".$searchphrase."%')";
    }

$sql_search .= implode(" OR ", $sql_search_fields);
$rs2 = mysql_query($sql_search);
$out = mysql_num_rows($rs2)."\n";
echo "Number of search hits in $table " . $out;