Question

How can write a query for Oracle database such that I can find a comma delimited list of values from a column that contains comma delimited list of values. The :parameter passed to sql statement is also a comma delimited values that user selected.

For e.g
We have a column in tables that contains

1 | ‘A’,’B’,’C’

2 | ‘C’,’A’

3 | ‘A’,’B’

on the web application interface we have multi select box that shows
A
B
C
and allows user to to select one or more items.

I want rows 1 and 2 to show up if they select A and B, If they select A only the all three should show up b/c all rows 1 to 3 have ‘A’ value in it.

Answer 1

This example will hopefully help and it matches the values irrespective of which order they appear in the string in the DB record.

Create example table:

CREATE TABLE t
(val VARCHAR2(100));

Insert records:

INSERT INTO t VALUES
('1|''A'',''B'',''C''');

INSERT INTO t VALUES
('2|''C'',''A''');

INSERT INTO t VALUES
('3|''A'',''B''');

Check values:

SELECT * FROM t;

1|'A','B','C'
2|'C','A'    
3|'A','B'

Check solution for ‘A’:

SELECT val
  FROM t
 WHERE REGEXP_LIKE(val, '(A)');

1|'A','B','C'   
2|'C','A'      
3|'A','B'

Check solution for A and B

SELECT val
  FROM t
 WHERE REGEXP_LIKE(val, '(A|B).*(A|B)');

1|'A','B','C'
3|'A','B'

If you want to make sure the 1| part of the result isn’t matched by anything then you could query using:

SELECT val
  FROM t
 WHERE REGEXP_LIKE(val, '(.\|.*)(A)');

and

SELECT val
  FROM t
 WHERE REGEXP_LIKE(val, '(.\|.*)(A|B).*(A|B)');

Hope this helps…