Non-binary LIKE in MySQL through Django ORM

Question

This is a follow-up from this question. Although I can write a non-binary LIKE query such as - SELECT COUNT(*) FROM TABLE WHERE MID LIKE 'TEXT%' in raw SQL, I would like to know if it's possible through the Django ORM.

Both startswith and contains seem to be using a binary pattern search.

Answer 1

Try istartswith and icontains, which in MySQL resolve to LIKE rather than LIKE BINARY.

Note that with MySQL, the case-sensitivity of the comparison depends on the collation set in the database (meaning that i lookups may still be case-sensitive!).