Query to be used in the conditions, when space in between the value

Question

Hi!

I am using JQuery and CakePHP for my application. I have a table Attributes(id,form_id,label,type)

In this table, I have an entry like

1 1 First name Text
2 1 Lastname Text

I have written a CakePhp query to retrieve the id given the form_id and the label

$attri = $this->Attribute->find('all', array(
   'fields'=> array('Attribute.id'),
   'conditions' => array(
      'Attribute.form_id' => $id,
      'Attribute.label' => $key
   )
));

where $key is my label and $id is my form_id. However, since the First name includes the space in between, the conditions didn't work well, but it works for Lastname since it didn't have space in between. How can I fix this?

Edit:

I am using MySQL database. The user can keep whatever the fieldname. I got the parameters $key from a form using $_POST, e.g.:

foreach ($_POST as $key => $value): 
echo $key; //displays First name correctly.

But when I use $key in the conditions, only if no spaces are in between the label it accepts, it will return the attribute id, else nothing is returned.

I even tried with using "$key", but it doesn't work either.

Answer 1

The bug must be somewhere else in your code. It is perfectly fine to have spaces in the values that you use for conditions. See this page in the CakePHP book for an example. CakePHP automatically escapes the values for you so they work, even with spaces.

Have a look at your Attribute model and see what happens in the beforeFind or afterFind callbacks.