how to concatenate n columns into one?

Question

my goal is if I have this:

colmuns      c1 | c2 | c3 | c4 | c5 | n..
row1          a |  a |  a |  a |  a | 
row2          b |  b |  b |  b |  b |
rowN...
         


        

Answer 1

You can simply use T-SQL's string concatenation operator '+'

SELECT c1 + c2 + c3 + c4 + c5 + ...
FROM myTable

In case some of the columns may contain null values you can use the ISNULL() function, as in

SELECT ISNULL(c1, '') + ISNULL(c2, 'x') + ...  -- note how you can substribute NULLs with any desired value
FROM myTable

You can dynamically create such SELECT statements by tapping into SQL Server metadata:

SELECT COLUMN_NAME, *
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS
WHERE table_name = 'myTable'
   AND DATA_TYPE IN ('char', 'varchar') -- can further filter out non desired colums
order by ORDINAL_POSITION    -- and also pick a given order

For example

DECLARE @SqlStmt AS VARCHAR(8000)
DECLARE @Ctr AS INT
DECLARE @ColName AS VARCHAR(80)

DECLARE colCursor CURSOR 
   FOR SELECT COLUMN_NAME
   FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS
   WHERE table_name = 'myTable'
      AND DATA_TYPE IN ('char', 'varchar')
  ORDER BY  ORDINAL_POSITION
  FOR READ ONLY;

OPEN colCursor;

SET @Ctr = 0
SET @SqlStmt = 'SELECT '

FETCH NEXT FROM colCursor INTO @colName;
WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0
BEGIN
    IF @Ctr > 0
    BEGIN
        SET @SqlStmt = @SqlStmt + ' + '; -- w/o the spaces if size is a pb
    END
    SET @Ctr = @Ctr + 1;
    SET @SqlStmt = @SqlStmt + @ColName;   -- w/ ISNULL if needed...

    FETCH NEXT FROM colCursor INTO @colName;
END;
CLOSE colCursor
DEALLOCATE colCursor

SET @SqlStmt = @SqlStmt + ' FROM ' + 'myTable'
-- Here to add to @SqlStmt (WHERE clause, other columns, other 
-- tables/join whatever...

PRINT @SqlStmt  -- OR EXEC() it ...