"Get" function doesn't work because not all hyphens should be replaced

Question

I use a Get function to look for the field model in an url but I have a problem when the model contains a space and a hyphen. Example: my model in the url is "this-f-example" and the model in the database is "this f-example" (so without the first hyphen).

I wrote the following php code, but it's not sufficient. It would only look for this f example or this-f-example in my database so it would return nothing because those models don't exist.

What should I change to my code so it would look for the models this-f example and this f-example too?

Complete url: http//:www.example.com/test.php?model=this-f-example

Corresponding model in database: this f-example

<?php
    $pdo = new PDO ('mysql:host.....');    
    $model1 = str_replace ('-', ' ', $_GET['model']);
    $model2 = $_GET['model'];

    $sql = "SELECT DISTINCT brand, model FROM `exampletable` WHERE model = :model1 OR model = :model2";

    $stmt = $pdo->prepare($sql);
    $stmt->bindParam(":model1", $model1);
    $stmt->bindParam(":model2", $model2);
    $stmt->execute();

    if($result = $stmt->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC))
    {
      echo $result['brand']; 
      echo $result['model'];
    }
?>

Answer 1

You could use Regular Expressions.

// turn 'this-f-model' to 'this[- ]f[- ]example'
$model = str_replace ('-', '[- ]', $_GET['model']);

$sql = "SELECT DISTINCT brand, model FROM `exampletable` WHERE model REGEXP :model";

$stmt = $pdo->prepare($sql);
$stmt->bindParam(":model", $model);
$stmt->execute();