Facebook FQL: How To Search Partial Strings (Similar To MySQL Like Operator)

Wondering if the FQL has an operator similar to the MySQL LIKE operator to do string search operations?

FQL does have a similar functionality:

Other functions that are available are now(), strlen(), substr() and strpos().

The function we need is the strpos() function and here how to use it:

SELECT name 
FROM user 
WHERE uid IN (
	SELECT uid2 
	FROM friend 
	WHERE uid1=me()
)
AND strpos(lower(name),"jo") >=0

The above will match all your friends where the name field contains the letters “jo” (“Joe, John, Joseph…etc”).

Notes to consider:

• To do case-insensitive search, use the lower() method and make sure that the second parameter (the search value or “jo” in the example above) is also using small letters
• Note the >=0 bit, this is mandatory to get the expected results !
• When a field is used in the strpos() function, it’s no longer treated as an indexable field!
• Use the fql.query Test Console to test your queries