MySQL Uppercase in Where Clause
The UPPER() function in SQL language allows you to transform all lowercase characters in a string into uppercase. This function can therefore be useful to present results in a certain way.
Warning: you should probably pay attention to the encoding used. With MySQL, the function uses by default the ISO 8859-1 Latin1 set.
Syntax:
The syntax of a query using this SQL function is as follows:
SELECT column1, column2, .... FROM table_name WHERE UPPER(column1) = 'VALUE-IN-UPPERCASE'
Example :
Let’s suppose an application with users. This application uses a table that stores the name, age, and address of each user.
Users Table:
+----------+-----------+--------+-------------------------------+ | userID | name | age | address | +----------+-----------+--------+-------------------------------+ | 101 | Alex | 25 | 819 Saint Francis Way | | 102 | Emily | 15 | 171 Jarvisville Road Michigan | | 103 | Jean | 35 | 188 Clay Street Indiana | | 104 | Bob | 40 | 285 Java Lane Missouri | +----------+-----------+--------+-------------------------------+
Search for a name in upper case
Let’s suppose that the user is looking for a name using uppercase letters and we know that the table stores names in lowercase. In order to find a user from his name in upper case, it would be enough to use the UPPER() function in WHERE clause, like this:
SELECT userID, name, age, address FROM users WHERE UPPER(name) = 'JEAN'
Output:
+----------+-----------+--------+-------------------------------+ | userID | name | age | address | +----------+-----------+--------+-------------------------------+ | 103 | Jean | 35 | 188 Clay Street Indiana | +----------+-----------+--------+-------------------------------+