Equivalent of explode() to work with strings in MySQL

MYSQL has no explode() like function built in. But you can easily add similar function to your DB and then use it from php queries. That function will look like:

CREATE FUNCTION SPLIT_STRING(str VARCHAR(255), delim VARCHAR(12), pos INT)
RETURNS VARCHAR(255)
RETURN REPLACE(SUBSTRING(SUBSTRING_INDEX(str, delim, pos),
       CHAR_LENGTH(SUBSTRING_INDEX(str, delim, pos-1)) + 1),
       delim, '');

Usage:

SELECT SPLIT_STRING('apple, pear, melon', ',', 1)

The example above will return apple. I think that it will be impossible to return array in MySQL so you must specify which occurrence to return explicitly in pos. Let me know if you succeed using it.