How to split a single row in to multiple columns in mysql

Question

Simply Asking, Is there any function available in mysql to split single row elements in to multiple columns ? I have a table row with the fields, user_id, user_name, u

Answer 1

First normalize the string, removing empty locations and making sure there's a % at the end:

select replace(concat(user_location,'%'),'%%','%') as str
from YourTable where user_id = 1

Then we can count the number of entries with a trick. Replace '%' with '% ', and count the number of spaces added to the string. For example:

select length(replace(str, '%', '% ')) - length(str)
    as LocationCount    
from (
    select replace(concat(user_location,'%'),'%%','%') as str
    from YourTable where user_id = 1
) normalized

Using substring_index, we can add columns for a number of locations:

select length(replace(str, '%', '% ')) - length(str)
    as LocationCount    
, substring_index(substring_index(str,'%',1),'%',-1) as Loc1
, substring_index(substring_index(str,'%',2),'%',-1) as Loc2
, substring_index(substring_index(str,'%',3),'%',-1) as Loc3
from (
    select replace(concat(user_location,'%'),'%%','%') as str
    from YourTable where user_id = 1
) normalized

For your example US%UK%JAPAN%CANADA, this prints:

LocationCount  Loc1    Loc2    Loc3
4              US      UK      JAPAN

So you see it can be done, but parsing strings isn't one of SQL's strengths.