Multi Columns filtration in stored procedure in SQL Server - sql

Question

I am having more controls (assume 10 controls with textbox, dropdown, radio buttons) in my Windows forms application for filtering data which all are not a mandatory, hence user may filter data with 1 control or more.
Now I have to create a stored procedure for filtering the data based on their inputs.
Ex: if user enters some text in 1 textbox control, and left remaining 9 controls with empty data, I have to filter data based on only that textbox which user entered.
If user enters some text in 1 textbox control and 1 dropdown, and left remaining 8 controls with empty data, I have to filter data based on only that textbox and dropdown which user entered.
What am I supposed to do?
In source code:
If user entered/selected text on any control, I am passing values as parameters else i am passing as "null" to remaining all other parameters .
In stored procedure:
I gave all 10 controls parameters to get value from Source Code,based on parameters I am filtering data.
if #Param1=null && #Param2=null && #Param3='SomeText'
begin
sELECT * FROM tABLE1 wHERE TableCOLUMN3=#Param3
END
if #Param1=null && #Param2='SomeText' && #Param3='SomeText'
begin
sELECT * FROM tABLE1 wHERE TableCOLUMN2=#Param2 AND TableCOLUMN3=#Param3
END
Note: I need to filter data with each table column to each parameter , Simply assume #Param1--TableCOLUMN1, #param2--TableCOLUMN2, filter varies depend on parameters text.
If I do like this my stored procedure will be more enormous and very big because I have 10 parameters to check (just for your reference I gave 3 parameters above sample).
What I want is :
Since I gave 10 parameters, based on parameters which having values (some text other than NULL) only I have to filter data by using where condition.
Is there any other way to do this, or does anyone have any other ways for this to do?

Answer 1

As long as you make your params default to null and either don't pass in a value for the params you dont need or pass in dbnull value then you can filter like this
CREATE PROC dbo.SAMPLE
(
#Param1 VARCHAR(255) = NULL,
#Param2 VARCHAR(255) = NULL,
#Param3 VARCHAR(255) = NULL,
#Param4 VARCHAR(255) = NULL,
#Param5 VARCHAR(255) = NULL,
#Param6 VARCHAR(255) = NULL
)
AS
BEGIN
SELECT *
FROM Table1
WHERE (#Param1 IS NULL OR TableCOLUMN1 = #Param1)
AND (#Param2 IS NULL OR TableCOLUMN2 = #Param2)
AND (#Param3 IS NULL OR TableCOLUMN3 = #Param3)
AND (#Param4 IS NULL OR TableCOLUMN4 = #Param4)
AND (#Param5 IS NULL OR TableCOLUMN5 = #Param5)
OPTION (RECOMPILE) -- as JamesZ suggested to prevent caching
END
EXEC dbo.SAMPLE #Param2 = 'SomeText' -- only filter where TableCOLUMN2 = #Param2

Answer 2

I would suggest something like that:
SELECT *
FROM TABLE1
WHERE TableCOLUMN1=ISNULL(#Param1,TableCOLUMN1)
AND TableCOLUMN2=ISNULL(#Param2,TableCOLUMN2)
AND TableCOLUMN3=ISNULL(#Param3,TableCOLUMN3)
AND TableCOLUMN4=ISNULL(#Param4,TableCOLUMN4)
... and so on...
This will filter column1 on a value if you specify param1 otherwise it will use the columnvalue itself which will always be true.
But this will only work if your #Param values were NULL in each case if you won't use them.

Answer 3

If the table is big / you need to use indexes for fetching the rows, the problem with this kind of logic is, that indexes can't really be used. There's basically two ways how you can do that:
Add option (recompile) to the end of the select statement by #Ionic or #user1221684. This will cause the statement to be recompiled every time it is executed, which might be a lot of CPU overhead if it's called often.
Create dynamic SQL and call it using sp_executesql
Example:
set #sql = 'SELECT * FROM TABLE1 WHERE '
if (#Param1 is not NULL) set #sql = #sql + 'TableCOLUMN1=#Param1 AND '
if (#Param2 is not NULL) set #sql = #sql + 'TableCOLUMN2=#Param2 AND '
if (#Param3 is not NULL) set #sql = #sql + 'TableCOLUMN3=#Param3 AND '
-- Note: You're not concatenating the value of the parameter, just it's name
set #sql = #sql + ' 1=1' -- This handles the last 'and'
EXEC sp_executesql #sql,
N'#Param1 varchar(10), #Param2 varchar(10), #Param3 varchar(10)',
#Param1, #Param2, #Param3
As an extra option, you could do some kind of mix between your original idea and totally dynamic one, so that it would have at least the most common search criteria handled so that in can be fetched efficiently.

Answer 4

Normally every parameter will have a default value, for example int will have the default value as zero. So using this you can have the condition. See the exam sql below.
create procedure [dbo].[sp_report_test](
#pParam1 int,
#pParam2 int ,
#pParam3 int,
#pParam4 varchar(50)
)
AS
SELECT
*
FROM [vw_report]
where
(#pParam1 <= 0 or Column1 = #pParam1) and
(#pParam2 <= 0 or Column2 = #pParam2) and
(#pParam3 <= 0 or Column3 = #pParam3) and
(#pParam4 is null or len(#pParam4) <= 0 or Column4 = #pParam4);
GO