Question

My program generates a list at runtime of values. I need to send a sql query that looks in a table for entries that have a column that contain one of the values in the list. I can’t use the usual chain of OR’s because I don’t know how big the list will be. Is there a nice way to use an array or some IEnumerable to build a SQL statement that makes a big chain of OR’s for me? Using C# BTW

I’m using SQL Server but I’d prefer something that works across all databases if such a thing exists.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Try this:

SELECT * FROM table WHERE column IN (@param)

And make sure you turn @param into the form “‘@p1, @p2, @p3′” by using your chosen language’s implode function.

The query should be standard for all SQLs I know.

Alternatively if you want to do a LIKE comparison:

SELECT * FROM table WHERE @param LIKE '%' (COALLESCE) column (COALLESCE) '%'

@param is still a quoted string, but you need to use a different COALLESCE operator depending on your database (SQL Server: ‘+’, MySQL: ‘.’, Oracle: ‘|’).

Example PHP implode code:

$ps = array('1', 'test', '323');
$param = implode(',', $ps);

Example C# “implode” code:

string[] ps = new string[] { "test", "blah", "boo" };
string param = string.Join(",", ps));