I have the following code which will create a comma delimited list for my results:
DECLARE @listStr VARCHAR(MAX)
SELECT @listStr = COALESCE(@listStr+', ' ,'') + INSTITUTIONNAME
FROM EDUCATION
WHERE STUDENTNUMBER= '111'
SELECT @listStr
The problem is its creating one massive comma delimited line. I need it to return a comma separated list per row.
So if Simon
has been part of 2 institutions, then i expect:
"INSTITUTION1, INSTITUTION2"
As i didnt supply a where clause i expect my results to show up like this for each row in the database.
Use FOR XML PATH('')
and STUFF() as follows Which gives you the same comma seperated result
SELECT STUFF((SELECT ',' + INSTITUTIONNAME
FROM EDUCATION EE
WHERE EE.STUDENTNUMBER=E.STUDENTNUMBER
ORDER BY sortOrder
FOR XML PATH('')), 1, 1, '') AS listStr
FROM EDUCATION E
GROUP BY E.STUDENTNUMBER
Here is the FIDDLE
For Sql Server 2017 and later you can use the new STRING_AGG
function
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/t-sql/functions/string-agg-transact-sql
The following example replaces null values with 'N/A' and returns the
names separated by commas in a single result cell.
SELECT STRING_AGG ( ISNULL(FirstName,'N/A'), ',') AS csv
FROM Person.Person;
Here is the result set.
John,N/A,Mike,Peter,N/A,N/A,Alice,Bob
Perhaps a more common use case is to group together and then aggregate, just like you would with SUM
, COUNT
or AVG
.
SELECT a.articleId, title, STRING_AGG (tag, ',') AS tags
FROM dbo.Article AS a
LEFT JOIN dbo.ArticleTag AS t
ON a.ArticleId = t.ArticleId
GROUP BY a.articleId, title;
I just saw another question very similar to this!
Here is the canonical NORTHWIND (spelled just slightly different for some reason) database example.
SELECT *
FROM [NORTHWND].[dbo].[Products]
SELECT CategoryId,
MAX( CASE seq WHEN 1 THEN ProductName ELSE '' END ) + ', ' +
MAX( CASE seq WHEN 2 THEN ProductName ELSE '' END ) + ', ' +
MAX( CASE seq WHEN 3 THEN ProductName ELSE '' END ) + ', ' +
MAX( CASE seq WHEN 4 THEN ProductName ELSE '' END )
FROM ( SELECT p1.CategoryId, p1.ProductName,
( SELECT COUNT(*)
FROM NORTHWND.dbo.Products p2
WHERE p2.CategoryId = p1.CategoryId
AND p2.ProductName <= p1.ProductName )
FROM NORTHWND.dbo.Products p1 ) D ( CategoryId, ProductName, seq )
GROUP BY CategoryId ;