Question

I’m looking for an SQL formatter that will do this:

INSERT INTO MyTable (col1, col2, col3, col4)
VALUES (
   1, -- col1
   2, -- col2
   3, -- col3
   4  -- col4
)

I can’t seem to find this feature in any of the free online SQL formatters, although it could be that I haven’t looked hard enough – hence the question. Surely such a thing exists – or if not it looks simple enough that I’m tempted to try and write one myself…

For anyone unconvinced about the value of doing this here is one of the (many) actual inserts – very hard to tell what the values represent without the inline commenting (and having one value per line is useful too):

INSERT INTO ForecastAcqControl
(   ForecastImageServiceId, LayerId, Style, IsForecast, IsTiled,
    LatSW, LongSW, LatNE, LongNE, PixelsWidth, PixelsHeight, ZoomLevels,
    TimeCoverageHours, TimeStepMinutes, UpdateIntervalMinutes, CreatedDT
)
VALUES
(
    1,                  -- ForecastImageServiceId: OBSERVATIONS
    1,                  -- LayerId: RADAR_UK_Composite_Highres
    NULL,               -- Style
    FALSE,              -- IsForecast
    FALSE,              -- IsTiled
    47,                 -- LatSW
    -15,                -- LongSW
    61,                 -- LatNE
    5,                  -- LongNE
    1000,               -- PixelsWidth
    1200,               -- PixelsHeight
    4,                  -- ZoomLevels
    -2,                 -- TimeCoverageHours
    5,                  -- TimeStepMinutes
    5,                  -- UpdateIntervalMinutes
    UTC_TIMESTAMP()         -- CreatedDT
);

Answer 1

Finally got round to creating a utility for doing this myself. (In retrospect, regular expressions may not have been the best way to go – but got there in the end!)

The tool is here: SQL Insert Commenter

Have done a fair amount of testing but there’s bound to be something it doesn’t work for so would be grateful if anyone trying it could let me know of any issues…