Question

I currently have a database table called civic_zip_code with zip, city, state, latitude, longitude columns.

I’ve been trying to get this working for a little while now and I can’t quite figure it out. Basically, since some cities have multiple zip codes, I’m trying to create a table that will allow me to associated all zip codes with that city. Since I want to have it readily available, I would like to dump it into a table, so I’m trying to come up with a SELECT INTO statement that will do it all for me.

I currently have this:

select distinct concat(city, ', ', state) as location, city, state, group_concat(zip SEPARATOR '|') as zip_codes 
from civic_zip_code 
group by city

What I have seems close, but what I’m seeming to have a problem is that it seems to only be using distinct on the city. I’m getting only Rochester, MN in the results, where I’m sure there should at least be a Rochester, NY as well. Also, it is combining the zip codes, so although I’m only getting Rochester, MN, it is including the Rochester, NY zip codes within the zip_codes column for Rochester, MN.

Below is exactly what I’m seeing for Rochester.

location       city          state          zip_codes
-------------- ------------- -------------- -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rochester, MN  Rochester     MN             55903|55904|55905|55906|48309|55902|55901|46975|48308|53167|48307|48306|62563|79544|42273|05767|14664|14683|14653|14660|14673|02770|03839|14694|14652|14651|14650|14649|14692|03868|15074|03866|03867|14647|14607|14606|14639|14642|14064|14601|14611|14608|14610|14602|14621|14622|14626|14603|14624|14609|14627|14604|14605|14623|14643|14619|14612|14625|14644|14613|14645|14646|14617|14618|14614|14616|14620|14615|14638|98579

I know at least the 146xx zip codes should be part of Rochester, NY rather than Rochester, MN.

Even if I take distinct out, it seems to be running into the same problem.

I tried a few other queries but none of them seemed to get what I was looking for.

Is there something I’m missing or an easy way to achieve what I’m looking for?

Thanks!

Answer 1

It sound like you want to group by both city and location. Like this:

select distinct concat(city, ', ', state) as location, city, state, group_concat(zip SEPARATOR '|') as zip_codes 
from civic_zip_code 
group by concat(city, ', ', state),city