Using Regular Expressions in MySQL Queries

arkin — Wed, 20 May 2009 13:38:06 +0000

Here is an example of how you would select data based on a regular expression.

SELECT phone FROM table WHERE phone REGEX '^[0-9 ]{11,14}$' = 0 LIMIT 100

The above would show all the phone numbers that are not between 11 and 14 numbers and spaces.

SELECT phone FROM table WHERE phone REGEX '^[0-9 ]{11,14}$' LIMIT 100

The above would show all the phone numbers that are between 11 and 14 numbers and spaces.

I hope this quick guide has helped.
Any questions, feel free to ask.

UK Postcode Regular Expression

arkin — Wed, 20 May 2009 13:19:27 +0000

Here is a UK postcode matching regular expression. I built it using a database of all the UK postcodes, so it does work for the strange ones.

This regular expression will match the first part:

^[A-Z]{1,2}[0-9]{1,2}[A-Z]?$

It will allow: B1, LN8, EC2M.
It will not allow: 123, 1LL, N123.

This regular expression should match the entire postcode:

^[A-Z]{1,2}[0-9]{1,2}[A-Z]? [0-9]{1,2}[A-Z]{1,3}$

It will allow: B1 7AB, LN8 12AR, EC2M 9CD.
It will not allow: 123 123, 1LL 123, N123 ASD.

Hope you find these as useful as I did.