How can I check whether a number is contained in comma separated list stored in a varchar column?

Question

I have a table with a varchar column categoryIds. It contains some IDs separated by commas, for example:

id       categoryIds
-----         


        

Answer 1

You should really redesign this table to split out those values from being comma separated to being in individual rows. However, if this is not possible, you are stuck with doing string comparison instead:

DECLARE @id INT = 3
DECLARE @stringId VARCHAR(50) = CAST(@id AS VARCHAR(50))

SELECT * 
FROM MyTable 
WHERE categoryIds = @stringId -- When there is only 1 id in the table
OR categoryIds LIKE @stringId + ',%' -- When the id is the first one
OR categoryIds LIKE '%,' + @stringId + ',%' -- When the id is in the middle
OR categoryIds LIKE '%,' + @stringId -- When the id is at the end

Answer 2

You could use dynamic SQL like this:

DECLARE     @categoryIds    nvarchar(50) = '1, 2, 3, 4, 5'

EXEC        ('SELECT      *
              FROM        myTable
              WHERE       categoryId IN (' + @categoryIds + ')')

Answer 3

use FIND_IN_SET() mysql function

Syntax

SELECT * FROM <table name> as a WHERE FIND_IN_SET(value to search in string,comma separated string);

Example

SELECT * FROM <table name> as a WHERE FIND_IN_SET(5,"1,2,3,4,5,6");

Answer 4

Not sure if this would be faster or slower than DavidG's suggestion, but in order to get the same matches with only one check, you can do:

DECLARE @categoryId INT
SET @categoryId = 3

SELECT *
FROM myTable
WHERE CHARINDEX(',' + CAST(@categoryId AS VARCHAR(MAX)) + ',', ',' + categoryIds + ',') > 0

Answer 5

SELECT * 
FROM myTable 
WHERE (',' + RTRIM(categoryIds) + ',') LIKE '%,' + @stringId + ',%'

Here @stringId is your text to be searched. In this way you can avoid unnecessary multiple where conditions

Kind Regards, Raghu.M.

Answer 6

SELECT * FROM user_master WHERE (user_tags regexp '[[:<:]]10[[:>:]]' or user_tags regexp '[[:<:]]11[[:>:]]')