How to create a SQL Server function to “join” multiple rows from a subquery into a single delimited field? [duplicate]

Answer 1

If you're using SQL Server 2005, you could use the FOR XML PATH command.

SELECT [VehicleID]
     , [Name]
     , (STUFF((SELECT CAST(', ' + [City] AS VARCHAR(MAX)) 
         FROM [Location] 
         WHERE (VehicleID = Vehicle.VehicleID) 
         FOR XML PATH ('')), 1, 2, '')) AS Locations
FROM [Vehicle]

It's a lot easier than using a cursor, and seems to work fairly well.

Answer 2

Note that Matt's code will result in an extra comma at the end of the string; using COALESCE (or ISNULL for that matter) as shown in the link in Lance's post uses a similar method but doesn't leave you with an extra comma to remove. For the sake of completeness, here's the relevant code from Lance's link on sqlteam.com:

DECLARE @EmployeeList varchar(100)
SELECT @EmployeeList = COALESCE(@EmployeeList + ', ', '') + 
    CAST(EmpUniqueID AS varchar(5))
FROM SalesCallsEmployees
WHERE SalCal_UniqueID = 1

Answer 3

From what I can see FOR XML (as posted earlier) is the only way to do it if you want to also select other columns (which I'd guess most would) as the OP does. Using COALESCE(@var... does not allow inclusion of other columns.

Update: Thanks to programmingsolutions.net there is a way to remove the "trailing" comma to. By making it into a leading comma and using the STUFF function of MSSQL you can replace the first character (leading comma) with an empty string as below:

stuff(
    (select ',' + Column 
     from Table
         inner where inner.Id = outer.Id 
     for xml path('')
), 1,1,'') as Values

Answer 4

I don't belive there's a way to do it within one query, but you can play tricks like this with a temporary variable:

declare @s varchar(max)
set @s = ''
select @s = @s + City + ',' from Locations

select @s

It's definitely less code than walking over a cursor, and probably more efficient.

Answer 5

VERSION NOTE: You must be using SQL Server 2005 or greater with Compatibility Level set to 90 or greater for this solution.

See this MSDN article for the first example of creating a user-defined aggregate function that concatenates a set of string values taken from a column in a table.

My humble recommendation would be to leave out the appended comma so you can use your own ad-hoc delimiter, if any.

Referring to the C# version of Example 1:

change:  this.intermediateResult.Append(value.Value).Append(',');
    to:  this.intermediateResult.Append(value.Value);

And

change:  output = this.intermediateResult.ToString(0, this.intermediateResult.Length - 1);
    to:  output = this.intermediateResult.ToString();

That way when you use your custom aggregate, you can opt to use your own delimiter, or none at all, such as:

SELECT dbo.CONCATENATE(column1 + '|') from table1

NOTE: Be careful about the amount of the data you attempt to process in your aggregate. If you try to concatenate thousands of rows or many very large datatypes you may get a .NET Framework error stating "[t]he buffer is insufficient."

Answer 6

If you're running SQL Server 2005, you can write a custom CLR aggregate function to handle this.

C# version:

using System;
using System.Data;
using System.Data.SqlClient;
using System.Data.SqlTypes;
using System.Text;
using Microsoft.SqlServer.Server;
[Serializable]
[Microsoft.SqlServer.Server.SqlUserDefinedAggregate(Format.UserDefined,MaxByteSize=8000)]
public class CSV:IBinarySerialize
{
    private StringBuilder Result;
    public void Init() {
        this.Result = new StringBuilder();
    }

    public void Accumulate(SqlString Value) {
        if (Value.IsNull) return;
        this.Result.Append(Value.Value).Append(",");
    }
    public void Merge(CSV Group) {
        this.Result.Append(Group.Result);
    }
    public SqlString Terminate() {
        return new SqlString(this.Result.ToString());
    }
    public void Read(System.IO.BinaryReader r) {
        this.Result = new StringBuilder(r.ReadString());
    }
    public void Write(System.IO.BinaryWriter w) {
        w.Write(this.Result.ToString());
    }
}