Is there a logical (and possible) way to do something like this?
UPDATE $table SET LIKE %_checkbox = '' WHERE id='$id'
I have fields like allowed_checkbox and types_checkbox and they are sent to the database script dynamically. Can you use a wildcard when referring to the column name?
No. You would have to generate the SQL string and then execute it separately. If you're trying to do something like this then you've probably got a bad schema design.
You've got a bit of a Frankenstein syntax there. The server will need to know the table and column names before compiling the SQL - so you can't do what you're after directly.
Does your php code have no prior knowledge of the database schema?
The key word you used is dynamically - you could find matching column names using a query against the MySQL INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS table. You could do this per-update, which would be expensive, or once at application start up extract the schema for all tables you need.