Collation searches and Active Record

[eluser]ascotan[/eluser]
There is currently no way to switch the collation type "on the fly" for a search (at least that i could easily find).

I'd like to do to following with MySQL:

SELECT x
FROM y
WHERE z = limiter
AND a LIKE '%searchterm%' COLLATE latin1_general_ci
ORDER BY b
LIMIT c

This is because my table default is "latin1_general_cs". I need CS in the db, however I want particular searches to be CI. (case sensitive/insensitive).

Anywho. I went about adding a 4th parameter to the LIKE queries:

Code:

function like($field, $match = '', $side = 'both', $collation=NULL)
    {
        return $this->_like($field, $match, 'AND ', $side, NULL, $collation);
    }

.....


    function _like($field, $match = '', $type = 'AND ', $side = 'both', $not = '', $collation)
    {
......

            if ($side == 'before')
            {
                $like_statement = $prefix." $k $not LIKE '%{$v}'";
                if ($collation){
                    $like_statement = $like_statement." COLLATE ".$collation;
                }
            }
.....

So I can run:

Code:

if ($filter_type->modifier_type == "text"){
            switch($filter->modifier){
                            case 0:
                                $this->db->where($selector, $filter->text, NULL, 'latin1_general_ci');
                                break;
                            case 1:  
                                $this->db->like($selector, $filter->text, NULL, 'latin1_general_ci');  
                                break;
                            case 2;
                                $this->db->like($selector, $filter->text, 'before', 'latin1_general_ci');
                                break;  
                            case 3;
                                $this->db->like($selector, $filter->text, 'after', 'latin1_general_ci');
                                break;      
                        }
                    }

I'd like to "hook" this or something but the DB modules are not "hookable". Wondering if there was another way to do this or if not, that this might be a nice feature for peeps that use CS collation types on their tables.