How do I search for the exact string match using CiviCRM API

Question

How do I perform Contact GET for the contact with the exact display name which will return only contacts with that exact display name?

Say I create two users xyz and xyzA

$result = civicrm_api3('Contact', 'create', array(
  'sequential' => 1,
  'contact_type' => "Individual",
  'display_name' => "xyz",
));

$result = civicrm_api3('Contact', 'create', array(
  'sequential' => 1,
  'contact_type' => "Individual",
  'display_name' => "xyzA",
));

The flowing get request always returns both contacts (xyz and xyzA)

$result = civicrm_api3('Contact', 'get', array(
  'sequential' => 1,
  'display_name' => "xyz",
));

I want my API call to return only users with a display name xyz. How would I do this?

There is an option to turn off Automatic Wildcard, but that would affect the entire website and all the users. Is there a way around this?

Answer 1

The Contact API is non-standard in APIv3; a major goal of APIv4 is to remove these quirks. The behavior you're seeing on Display Name is non-standard. It also seems that a lot of the other operators (e.g. "LIKE") don't work on Display Name.

If you can, you can search on First Name and/or Last Name, neither of which display the problem described here.