Shiny Reactive SQL: WHERE clause - sql

Question

I am new to SQL and i am trying to figure out how i can "select all" in WHERE clause.
Let me make it bit more clearer why i would like to achieve that:
I do have reactive SQL in my Shiny App. The user can filter at least three different variables in my SQL:
In this case user can choose Kunde (Customer), Abmessung (Diameter) and Date. I do have hard time to figure out when the user wants to filter only one/two variables and not three (the combinations of possibilities inside is huge, and writing SQL Query in if statement for each is quite a thing). So for example the user would like to have Kunde (Customer) filtered but all the Abmessung (Diameters) kept.
Here is a sample SQL Query which i have used:
select * from x.xy where kdname IN (",paste0("'",paste(input$kunde,
collapse="', '"),"'"),") and abmessung IN (",paste0("'",paste(input$abm,
collapse="', '"),"'"),") and dati_create between
to_date('",format(input$date[1], '%d.%m.%Y'),"','dd.mm.yyyy') and
to_date('",format(input$date[2], '%d.%m.%Y'),"','dd.mm.yyyy') + (86399/86400)
Is there a possibility in SQL to use some kind of "*" in WHERE clause?

Answer 1

Why not simply do it using if to each condition and than paste collapse it
( i think there isn t way to do what your want without "if\esle" or "case" or "nvl" or "decode" so you need to hardcode it)
like:
input=list("kunde"="a","abm"="b",date=c("2016-01-01","2016-02-01"))
#input=list("kunde"="","abm"="",date=c("","")) # for test
sql_main="select * from x.xy "
sql_cond=list()
sql_cond[1]= if(input$kunde==""){NULL}else{paste0("kdname IN ('",paste(input$kunde,collapse="','"),"')")}
sql_cond[2]= if(input$abm==""){NULL}else{paste0("abmessung IN ('",paste(input$abm,collapse="', '"),"')")}
sql_cond[3]= if(input$date[1]==""|input$date[2]==""){NULL}else{paste0("dati_create between to_date('",as.character(as.Date(input$date[1]),'%d.%m.%Y'),"','dd.mm.yyyy') and
to_date('",as.character(as.Date(input$date[2]),'%d.%m.%Y'),"','dd.mm.yyyy') + (86399/86400)")}
sql_cond=sql_cond[!sapply(sql_cond,is.null)]# needed to del NULL in list
sql_cond_all=paste(sql_cond,collapse =" and ")
sql=if(sql_cond_all!=""){paste(sql_main,"where",sql_cond_all)}else{sql_main}
sql

Answer 2

If you use RMySQL you can just paste together a chr string as query.
So you could do something like this:
condition <- character()
if(input$kdname != "") condition <- append(condition, paste0("kdname IN '", paste(input$kdname, collapse = "', '"), "'"))
if(input$abm != "") condition <- append(condition, paste0("abmessung IN '", paste(input$abm, collapse = "', '"), "'"))
query <- paste("SELECT * FROM x.xy WHERE", paste(condition, collapse = " AND "))

Answer 3

I am not familiar with shiny. However, I think you could achieve your goal by using oracle's decode function.
The where clause will look something like this (pseudo-code)
where
decode(input_variable,null,1,input_variable)=decode(input_variable,null,1,table_column)
and dati_create between
decode(input_date1,null,'1/1/1900',input_date1)
and decode(input_date2,null,'1/1/3000',input_date2)
and table_column2 in (
SELECT decode(inputvarable2,null, (select table_column2 from dual)
,TRIM(REGEXP_SUBSTR(temp, '[^,]+', 1, level)) )
FROM (SELECT inputvarable2 temp FROM DUAL)
CONNECT BY level <= REGEXP_COUNT(temp, '[^,]+')
)
Here I assume that when input variable is not given - it has null value. Also, as user input sample was not provided, I assume that user input for in clause is comma separated string. (e.g. 'a,b,c')
And thus, if input_variable is null then where becomes 1=1 (always true), otherwise it is input_variable=table_column. With dates it is a little bit more tricky - so I give very early date (1/1/1900), or very far away one (1/1/3000). The logic behind in clause, is to convert user input into collection from comma separated string and then use the same trick with decode.
Though this might not be the most efficient way to do this.
Also I see that you are concatenating user input directly into your sql statement. This is highly risky - as your code would be prone to sql injection attacks.

Answer 4

I find sub function very useful when constructing queries, try this:
myquery <- 'select * from x.xy where kdname IN "NAME" and abmessung IN "ABM" and dati_create between DATE1 and DATE2 + (86399/86400)'
date1 <- input$date[1];date1 <- sub("-",".",date1);date1 <- sub("-",".",date1)
date2 <- input$date[2];date2 <- sub("-",".",date2);date2 <- sub("-",".",date2)
myquery <- sub("DATE1",date1,myquery)
myquery <- sub("DATE2",date2,myquery)
myquery <- sub("NAME",input$kunde,myquery)
myquery <- sub("ABM",input$abm,myquery)
myquery <- noquote(myquery)
myquery