SQL split or substring column value - sql

Question

I have an sql column and value/structure as per below:
ColumnA
ROOT/South America/Lima/Test/Test2
Running a select query I want to extract "Lima" As a column value. I couldn't get the split string to work, or substring.
Any thoughts?

Answer 1

This is my approach to get the nth part of any delimited string:
DECLARE #mockupTable TABLE(ID INT IDENTITY, YourColumn VARCHAR(1000));
INSERT INTO #mockupTable VALUES('ROOT/South America/Lima/Test/Test2')
,('Too/short')
,('Three/parts/valid');
--The splitting is a one-liner:
SELECT *
,CAST('<x>' + REPLACE(YourColumn,'/','</x><x>') + '</x>' AS XML).value('/x[3]','nvarchar(max)') AS ThirdPart
FROM #mockupTable;
If your delimited strings might include XML-forbidden characters (namely &, < and >, you'd have to escape them (but that's easy):
Just use this instead
,CAST('<x>' + REPLACE((SELECT YourColumn [*] FOR XML PATH('')),'/','</x><x>') + '</x>' AS XML).value('/x[3]','nvarchar(max)') AS ThirdPart
Some explanation
The replacements of your delimiter / with </x><x> allow to get an XML like string, which can be casted to
<x>ROOT</x>
<x>South America</x>
<x>Lima</x>
<x>Test</x>
<x>Test2</x>
The XML's method .value() allows to use XQuery to get the third <x>. One advantage: If there is no third element, this won't break, just return NULL.

Answer 2

A little out there but it works. Based on a recursive cte. You can set the delimiter, start and end.
declare #T table (iden int identity, col1 varchar(100));
insert into #T(col1) values
('ROOT/South America/Lima/Test/Test2')
, ('ROOT/South America/Peru/Test/Test2')
, ('ROOT/South America/Venuzuala')
, ('ROOT/South America/');
declare #split char(1) = '/';
declare #start int = 2;
declare #end int = 3
select #split, #start, #end;
with cte as
( select t.iden, t.col1, charindex(#split, t.col1) as pos , 1 as cnt
from #T t
union all
select t.iden, t.col1, charindex(#split, t.col1, t.pos + 1), cnt + 1
from cte t
where charindex(#split, t.col1, t.pos + 1) > 0
and cnt+1 <= #end
)
--select * from cte order by iden, cnt;
select --t1.*, t2.*,
SUBSTRING(t1.col1, t1.pos+1, t2.pos-t1.pos-1) as bingo
from cte t1
join cte t2
on t2.iden = t1.iden
and t1.cnt = #start
and t2.cnt = #end
order by t1.iden;

Answer 3

declare #t varchar(max) = 'ROOT/South America/Lima/Test/Test2'
select * from (
select
[value]
,ROW_NUMBER() Over (Order by (select null )) [Level]
from string_split( #t , '/')
) d
where d.Level = 3
the code above dose the same with much simpler logic, split the text by '/' results to rows "String_Split", then row_number() to get the order of the results, each number is a level if no sorting has been done in the order by statment "(select null)"
as a result by adding the level number in the where statment will get the level value we want, above will show level 3