sql "LIKE" equivalent in django query

Use __contains or __icontains (case-insensitive):

result = table.objects.filter(string__contains='pattern')

The SQL equivalent is

SELECT ... WHERE string LIKE '%pattern%';

@Dmitri's answer below covers patterns like 'pattern%' or '%pattern'

contains and icontains mentioned by falsetru make queries like SELECT ... WHERE headline LIKE '%pattern%

Along with them, you might need these ones with similar behavior: startswith, istartswith, endswith, iendswith

making

SELECT ... WHERE headline LIKE 'pattern%

or

SELECT ... WHERE headline LIKE '%pattern

result = table.objects.filter(string__icontains='pattern')

Case insensitive search for string in a field.

In order to preserve the order of the words as in the sql LIKE '%pattern%' statement I use iregex, for example:

qs = table.objects.filter(string__iregex=pattern.replace(' ', '.*'))

string methods are immutable so your pattern variable will not change and with .* you'll be looking for 0 or more occurrences of any character but break lines.

By using the following to iterate over the pattern words:

qs = table.objects
for word in pattern.split(' '):
    qs = qs.filter(string__icontains=word)

the order of the words in your pattern will not be preserved, for some people that could work but in the case of trying to mimic the sql like statement I'll use the first option.