Why isnt my soql query working in controller class?

Question

I am trying to make a page just for practice in which the account name, phone is displayed when entered in the search field.

It was successful but I wanted to make it better and tried to use the LIKE operator so any similar search text is displayed in results, but its not working. I know it has something to do with the set and get method in my class. Please look into the code below and excuse my silly mistakes.

Controller Class - just a heads up i have added two class that i tried, both are same. I don't know why i tried the second. Maybe because that's how i have been using get and set methods all my life. Both don't show expected results, but if I insert a text explicitly in the searchtext variable, like 'test', then all the account name with test in it shows up. I think I am calling the accountname method wrong.

public  class accountcheckcontroller{ 
    public string accountname {get;set;}
    public list<account> acts {get;set;}

    string searchtext = '%' + accountname + '%' ;

    public pagereference AcctSearch(){
        acts = [Select name,phone  from account where Name Like :searchtext];

        return null;
    }  
}

or

public  class accountcheckcontroller{ 
    string accountname;

    public string getaccountname() {
        return accountname;
    }

    public void setaccountname(string accountname) {
        this.accountname=accountname;
    }

    public list<account> acts {get;set;}

    string searchtext = '%' + this.accountname + '%' ;

    public pagereference AcctSearch(){
        acts = [Select name,phone  from account where Name Like :searchtext];
        return null;
    }  
}

the VF page

<apex:page controller="accountcheckcontroller">
    <apex:form >
        <apex:pageblock >
            <apex:pageblocksection >
                 <apex:inputText id="searchaccount" value="{!accountname}"/> <br/>                                
                  <apex:commandButton value="Search Account" action="{!Acctsearch}" /> <br/>
                      <apex:pageblockTable value="{!acts}" var="a">
                        <apex:column value="{!a.Name}"/>
                        <apex:column value="{!a.Phone}"/>
                      </apex:pageblockTable>
                </apex:pageblocksection>
        </apex:pageblock>
     </apex:form>
</apex:page>

Answer 1

You should try keeping your line inside the method. So, that when you will click on button, then the latest value will be taken from UI, and appended with % mark, and then used. Otherwise, you might be getting the searchText variable value as %null% as of now.

public  class accountcheckcontroller
{ 

public string accountname {get;set;}
public list<account> acts {get;set;}

public pagereference AcctSearch(){
string searchtext = '%' + accountname + '%' ;
acts = [Select name,phone  from account where Name Like :searchtext];

return null;
}  
}