The goal is to, by default, populate all the input fields of a query with a '%' and let the user put in real values wherever they want. However, this is causing a problem for the DATE/TIME field. I get the error: Conversion failed when converting date and/or time from character string. How can I achieve the equivalent of '%' but for dates?
DECLARE #trans_date datetime = '%'
SELECT
t.lp_num,
t.trans_date
FROM ISW_LPTrans AS t
WHERE t.trans_date = #trans_date
Edit: - Removed the LIKE and replaced with = because people kept focusing too much on that and it's not the focus of this question.
This is too long for a comment. Your query doesn't make sense. LIKE is for strings and dates are not strings.
If you like, you can convert the date to a canonical string format and then use that.
However, date pickers are the more typical solution for choosing dates, and the resulting code does not use LIKE.
You cannot use LIKE keywords directly on dates. LIKE is mostly used for string values.
However you can use the CONVERT function to cast your date as varchar and then apply the LIKE keyword. For example:
CONVERT(VARCHAR(25), trans_date, 126) LIKE '2016-10-01%'
The goal is to, by default, populate all the input fields of a query
with a '%' and let the user put in real values wherever they want.
If you want that user should be allowed to enter a date then you can simply provide NULL value to your date column instead of populating it with a % value(which is absolutely vague for a date column)
Related
I should preface my question by saying I am very new to SQL (or any programming involving databases). I started learning SQL a couple of weeks ago when I decided to take on a data project.
I have been using SSMS in wrangling large tables in comma-separated text file format. I need to be able to sort by dates, and the current format is mmddyyyy, but when I try to sort by date it does not work.
I know that converting dates is something that gets asked a lot around here, but I haven't found any solutions that explain things for a newb like myself.
So far my guesses for a solution are to use the CONVERT or CAST solutions, but I'm not sure if that is the right approach. I have found several CAST/CONVERT posts but none have really applied to my situation.
I hate to have this as my first question, but I'd thought I'd take some down vote bullets if it means I could figure this out. Thank you.
Sample of what I'm trying to do:
SELECT *
FROM [databasename].[dbo].[table1]
WHERE [ column1] > 01012017;
I get the entire table back, unsorted.
Since your:
SELECT *
FROM [databasename].[dbo].[table1]
WHERE [ column1] > 01012017;
does not error, we could say that the [column1]'s datatype is either a character type (like VARCHAR, char), or datetime.
Since you are getting back all the data and I would think you don't have data in the future, it should be a varchar (or char) - with datetime that means 1900-01-01 + 1012017 days.
To make it a datetime you need to 'cast' your column1 which is in mmddyyyy form by first converting it to yyyymmdd style (which would work under any date and language setting):
cast(right([column1],4)+substring([column1],1,2)+substring([column1],3,2) as datetime)
and you would write that 01012017 as a string (quotes around) and also again in yyyymmdd format (it would be implicitly casted to datetime):
'20170101'
So your SQL becomes:
SELECT *
FROM [databasename].[dbo].[table1]
WHERE cast(right([column1],4) +
substring([column1],1,2) +
substring([column1],3,2) as datetime) > '20170101';
Having a date\datetime column as varchar and using like this would render the ability to use simple indexes but that is another matter. For now, this would return the data you want.
Assuming your column's datatype is [Date], try something similar to:
SELECT *
FROM [databasename].[dbo].[table1]
WHERE FORMAT([column1],'dd/MM/yyyy') >'01012017'
If it's string format, you'll have to use CONVERT() to convert the column to Date with a query like
SELECT *
FROM [databasename].[dbo].[table1]
WHERE CONVERT(NVARCHAR(10), [Column1], 112) >'01012017'
Refer to this W3Schools article if you need more help with the CONVERT clause
I need to perform a date search but the data is a String with the format
'dd/mm/yyyy'
I want to search only for 'mm/yyyy'
For example I want all records that have '07/2014' regardless of what day?
I'm sure its something simple just can't figure it out
EDIT:
It looks like the format is MM/DD/YYY
Looks like I got this sorted just used:
RIGHT(BookedDate,5) = '/2014'
AND LEFT (BookedDate,2) = '7/'
Thanks All :)
If your string is in the format of dd/mm/yyyy always, as in 01/09/2014 you could use right:
declare #val as varchar(10)
Set #val='1/2/2014'
RIGHT(#val,7)
if you are not sure of the format but know that there is a / you could search for it:
declare #val as varchar(10)
Set #val='1/2/2014'
select right(#val,len(#val)-patindex('%/%',#val))
myfield like '%/07/2014'
Beware, since the wildcard (%) is put at the beginning of the query no indexes (if they exist) will be used. This will always be a full table scan.
If you store your date values in character based column, than jyparask's answer is good enough, but if you store it in date/time based column, then use date/time functions or intervals:
WHERE
myDateColumn >= '01/07/2014'
AND myDateColumn < '01/08/2014'
The above WHERE condition means: all values in July, 2014.
This will ensure that, because its a string, if the value is longer than expected the first three characters will always be removed.
SELECT RIGHT(field, LEN(field)-3) FROM database
This feels like a very bad idea. Most likely there is a ton of optimizations that could be done automatically for your queries by the database if you used Date instead of the String.
This is certainly going to be some kind of bottleneck if your database grows, it would have to ask and parse every single row to find out if it matches your request.
I want to use Like operator in a column of datetime. The values of the column is as follows:
2013-08-31 17:54:52.000
2013-08-31 17:54:52.000
My query is as below:
SELECT * FROM table where created_date Like '%54%'
It works fine. but when I search for '%52%' instead of '%54%', it gives me nothing. (It is working when I search till the minutes, but when I search for seconds or milli seconds it does not work.)
I have looked at the following url and it is working
SQL LIKE Statement on a DateTime Type
I want to know the reason, why this is happening and how like operator works with datetime type column.
I think it would be a better idea to use the DATEPART operator of SQL SERVER to extract the portion of date.
And example could be like:-
SELECT * FROM table
where DATEPART(minute,created_date)=54
EDIT:-
I want to know the reason, why this is happening and how like operator
works with datetime type column.
Actually there is no direct support given by SQL Server for LIKE operator for DATETIME variable but you can always cast the DATETIME to a VARCHAR and then try to use the LIKE operator as you want.
On a side note:-
MSDN says:-
DATEPART can be used in the select list, WHERE, HAVING, GROUP BY and
ORDER BY clauses.
In SQL Server 2012, DATEPART implicitly casts string literals as a
datetime2 type. This means that DATEPART does not support the format
YDM when the date is passed as a string. You must explicitly cast the
string to a datetime or smalldatetime type to use the YDM format.
The 'LIKE' operator and any regular expression operators provided by other databases are used to process text values. A date is definitely not a text value, it is a separata type by itself.
It makes little sense to apply a text operator to a non-text type (like int or DATETIME or DATETIMEOFFSET), which is why you can't use LIKE on dates in any database. First of all, the values are not stored as text but in an implementation-specific binary form.
Then, while you can use LIKE on a specific text representation of a date, eg using CAST you have to absolutely certain what that representation is. Different locales display dates differently, with year first, year last, month first or last or whatever. What would you search against?
Moreover, what is 54? 54 minutes, 54 seconds or 654 milliseconds?
The only sensible solution is to use DATEPART to check specific parts of a date, or the BETWEEN operator to check for ranges.
I've got a seamingly simple problem to solve that normally would be fairly easy. I've got a field that contains a DateTime portion, as well as a trailing text portion. I now need to split this field into two discrete fields - DateTime and Varchar. Now for the little gotcha. The data has been saved with two different date formats which has resulted in the filed looking a 'lot' like this:
amendmentnote
----------------------------------------------------------------------
30/07/2010 11:39:55: Booking status change from On Option to Cancelled
5/5/2010 10:1:8 : New
as you can see, the dates are in two completely different formats. I'd like to somehow see it parsed out as:
dateofnote | note
----------------------------------------------------------------------
30/07/2010 11:39:55 | Booking status change from On Option to Cancelled
05/05/2010 10:01:08 | New
is this easily do-able??
cheers
jim
Easily? No. Do-able. Yes, if we can make some assumptions. If it is the case that the text never contains a colon, you could do:
Declare #Data Table ( Data Varchar(max) )
Insert #Data(Data) Values('30/07/2010 11:39:55: Booking status change from On Option to Cancelled')
Insert #Data(Data) Values('5/5/2010 10:1:8 : New')
Set DateFormat DMY
Select Cast(Reverse(Substring(Reverse(Data), CharIndex(':', Reverse(Data)) + 1, Len(Data))) As DateTime)
, LTrim(Reverse(Substring(Reverse(Data), 1, CharIndex(':', Reverse(Data)) - 1)))
From #Data
It's do-able, but it'll be ugly.
You can use string functions to find the third colon in the amendmentnote field, and anything to the right of the third colon will be your note.
As for the date, you should again be able to use string functions to reformat the date portion, although you'll most likely need lots of substrings to make it work.
My only concern would be if the date formats entered are MM/DD/YYYY for one entry, and DD/MM/YYYY for the other.
Based on what's provided, use:
SELECT CONVERT(DATETIME,
SUBSTRING(t.amendmentnote, 1, LEN(SUBSTRING(t.amendmentnote, 1, PATINDEX('%: %', t.amendmentnote)))-1),
103),
LTRIM(SUBSTRING(t.amendmentnote,
LEN(SUBSTRING(t.amendmentnote, 1, PATINDEX('%: %', t.amendmentnote)))+1,
LEN(t.amendmentnote)))
FROM YOUR_TABLE t
Being a DATETIME, you can use CAST/CONVERT to format it as you like - don't store "presentation" data.
Bad data is bad data - this is a mine field you'll have to navigate, isolating rows that won't match the pattern in the query & deal with appropriately.
Once in a DateTime column, they'll be in the standard DateTime format. How they're presented once queried at that point is up to you.
So, once you split your data into your DateOfNote and Note columns, you can Convert the DateOfNote to VarChar and apply a format to get what you want.
Convert(NVARCHAR, DateOfNate, 103) will get you there (I think: double check the format style there at the end).
Edit Based on your question, it looks like you wanted more help with the formatting. However, on the splitting the column, you'll need to use string functions. I'd find the index of that last colon, store it in a local variable, and then use substring to find the datetime (left of that last colon) and the note (right of last colon).
When I do for example DATEPART(mm, GETDATE()) I get the result of the month being "8" for August. If i did the same thing in December I would get "12". Those are two different length results.
Is there a way to get the DATEPART results to always be a fixed length? So that for example the months would show up as 08 or 12. And days would be 05 and 30.
More Details:
I'm using a derived column transformation in SSIS to take a server datestamp, and remove all the formatting (spaces, colons, dashes, etc) in order to use it as part of a Primary Key.
My forumula that currently works is below, however it results in variable lenght results which is not ideal. I would like to get all results to be the same lenght.
((DT_STR,4,1252)DATEPART("yyyy",createDate)) + ((DT_STR,2,1252)DATEPART("mm",createDate)) + ((DT_STR,2,1252)DATEPART("dd",createDate)) + ((DT_STR,2,1252)DATEPART("hh",createDate)) + ((DT_STR,2,1252)DATEPART("mi",createDate)) + ((DT_STR,2,1252)DATEPART("ss",createDate)) + ((DT_STR,2,1252)DATEPART("ms",createDate))
Input looks like this:
9/11/2008 8:50:47:300 PM
Results look like:
20089112050473
Results should look like:
20080911205047300
SELECT RIGHT(100+DATEPART(mm, GETDATE()),2)
EDIT based on new info
- to get your timestamp to a fixed string of numbers:
SELECT REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(CONVERT(varchar(23), GETDATE(), 121),'-',''),':',''),' ',''),'.','')
The return type of DATEPART is int. The moment you ask for 05, is no longer and int but a string (char, varchar, nchar, nvarchar etc). As long as you understand the difference and you are OK with it, there are all sort of manipulations you can do to format the string as you whish, a good example being the one DJ showed. In truth though the proper place for such manipulations is on the client reporting, not on the server.
You can use CONVERT to grab a fixed-length date, for example:
SELECT CONVERT(nvarchar(30), GETDATE(), 126)
Which will show:
2006-04-18T09:58:04.570
which every variable in a fixed position.
Building on Andomar's example above:
SELECT REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(
CONVERT(nvarchar(30), GETDATE(), 126),'-',''),'.',''),':',''),'T','')
Which will show:
20060418095804570
Caution: using a timestamp as a primary key WILL eventually bite you in the butt. Also, a primary key that is a number will be faster than a long string like this, so consider changing your algorithm to use a numeric conversion of the timestamp rather than a string.
Solution #2 Use a .NET user-defined function that wraps DateTime.ToString() so you can pass a specific format ("yyyymmddHHMMss" or whatever). Given the number of casts and replacements, it's possible this might perform just as well as straight T-SQL.