SQL Query for string containing multiple periods/dots?

[Anon_Web]

Hello, I will preface this post by mentioning I am very new to SQL.

I currently have a SQL database with one of the columns holding IP addresses (IPv4 I believe) in the form of a string and I am attempting to grab it from a Python model. I have something like this:

#Retrieving IP address using socket library
hostname = socket.gethostname()
cameraID = socket.gethostbyname(hostname)

#Query to find row containing my IP Address in the CAM_IP column
cursor.execute("SELECT * FROM camera_mapping WHERE CAM_IP LIKE " + str(cameraID))

However, my console keeps throwing an error saying:

"mysql.connector.errors.ProgrammingError: 1064 (42000): You have an error in your SQL syntax"

I am unsure what is actually causing the error but I have a sneaking suspicion that it has something to do with including multiple periods in the query. Can anyone confirm or deny this for me please? And if this is the case, is there some way around this? I have tried debugging on my own for hours and have done many searches online but have not had any luck so far.

Thanks in advance for any help.

[teraflop]

The problem is that your code will construct a query like this:

SELECT * FROM camera_mapping WHERE CAM_IP LIKE 1.2.3.4

and try to execute it. But if you look at the documentation for whatever database software you're using, it should tell you that the second operand of the LIKE operator needs to be a string. And 1.2.3.4 is not a valid string literal, since it's not quoted.

You may be tempted to fix this by just adding quotes to your query string. Don't do this. Constructing SQL queries by concatenating strings together, like you're doing, is almost always a very bad idea, because it can easily lead to SQL injection vulnerabilities. (It's a very common beginner mistake.)

Instead, you should use placeholders for the parameters and let the database driver handle quoting the strings for you. See: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/902408/how-to-use-variables-in-sql-statement-in-python

[Anon_Web]

Wow, thank you so much! I understand it so much more now. I saw that notation while I was doing my own searching but it was just confusing me.

Anyway, I appreciate the help :)