Question

I am creating a windows application using VB.Net and this application will take a SQl create .sql file as a parameter and will return all fields and their data types inside in a list or array.

Example:

USE [MyDB] GO /****** Object: Table [dbo].[User] Script Date: 07/07/2009 10:16:48 ******/ 

SET 
ANSI_NULLS ON GO 

SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON GO SET ANSI_PADDING ON GO CREATE TABLE [dbo].[User]( [UserId] [int] IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL, 

[FirstName] [varchar](50) COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS NOT NULL, [MiddleName] 

[varchar](50) COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_A 

Should Return:

UserId int, FirstName string, MiddleName string

I want to do this by any way, pure vb.net code or using RegEx.

Anyone knows the fastest way to finish this?

Answer 1

First, what flavor of SQL are you using? Second, the syntax for CREATE TABLE can be fairly “detailed”. Are you dealing with a smaller subset of the general syntax that might make approaching this problem simpler?

But rather than trying to parse the statement, the fastest way might be having a trash database that you can execute the CREATE TABLE statement on, and then extracting the column names and types via

SELECT COLUMN_NAME, DATA_TYPE
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS
WHERE TABLE_NAME='MyCreatedTable'

(I am assuming SQL Server here.)

Thusly,

string createTableCommandText; // "CREATE TABLE MyCreatedTable..."
using(var connection = new SqlConnection(connectionString)) {
    connection.Open();
    var createCommand = connection.CreateCommand();
    createCommand.CommandText = createTableCommandText;
    createCommand.ExecuteNonQuery();

    var schemaCommand = connection.CreateCommand();
    schemaCommand.CommandText = "SELECT COLUMN_NAME, DATA_TYPE FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS WHERE TABLE_NAME='MyCreatedTable'";
    var reader = schemaCommand.ExecuteReader();
    while(reader.Read()) {
        Console.WriteLine(String.Format("{0}|{1}", reader["COLUMN_NAME"], reader["DATA_TYPE"]));
    }

    var deleteCommand = connection.CreateCommand();
    deleteCommand.CommandText = "DROP TABLE MyCreatedTable";
    deleteCommand.ExecuteNonQuery();
}

Sorry that it’s in C#. I am not fluent enough with VB to write approximately correct code without a compiler at my fingertips.