Issue with some characters in the splitting strings - sql

Question

Below is the stored procedure
;WITH cte AS (
SELECT
AgentId,
CAST('<r>' + REPLACE(States, ',', '</r><r>') + '</r>' AS XML) AS States,
CAST('<r>' + REPLACE(REPLACE(Products,'&','&'), ',', '</r><r>') + '</r>' AS XML) AS Products
FROM #tbVendor
)
,FinalList AS (
SELECT
AgentId,
RTRIM(LTRIM (sTable.sColumn.value('.', 'VARCHAR(MAX)'))) AS States,
RTRIM(LTRIM (PTable.PColumn.value('.', 'VARCHAR(MAX)'))) AS Products
FROM cte
CROSS APPLY States.nodes('//r') AS sTable(sColumn)
CROSS APPLY Products.nodes('//r') AS PTable(PColumn)
)
SELECT DISTINCT F.Products AS ProductName
,T.ProductId AS ProductId
FROM FinalList F
CROSS APPLY (SELECT ProductId FROM #tbProduct TP WHERE TP.ProductName = F.Products) AS T
WHERE F.States = 'New York'
AND F.AgentId = 1
ORDER BY T.ProductId ASC
This is the SQL fiddle
http://rextester.com/SVXKFH57654
It is working fine and perfectly but it eliminate the records with "-" character in ProductName feild For e.g Non-Stick Utensils... etc
I am not able to tackle this issue... Please help me!!!

Answer 1

For the splitting string you use XML. In this case, you will have problems with some characters. For example &, <, >. You can avoid this by using another method of splitting a string
Table function splitting strings:
CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[SplitStr] (
#str varchar(MAX)
,#sep char(1)=','
)
RETURNS TABLE
AS
RETURN
(
WITH Split ( n1, n2)
AS
(
SELECT CAST(0 as bigint) as n1, CHARINDEX(#sep, #str + #sep) as n2
UNION ALL
SELECT n2 as n1, CHARINDEX(#sep, #str + #sep, n2 + 1) as n2
FROM Split
WHERE n2 < LEN(#str)
)
SELECT SUBSTRING(#str, n1+1, n2-n1-1) as Col FROM Split
)
GO
Using this function:
SELECT
tbVendor.AgentId
,States.Col as States
,Products.Col as Products
FROM #tbVendor as tbVendor
CROSS APPLY [dbo].[SplitStr](States, ',') as States
CROSS APPLY [dbo].[SplitStr](Products, ',') as Products
this is equivalent to your code
-- First convert all comma separated data into tabular form as:
;WITH cte AS (
SELECT
AgentId,
CAST('<r>' + REPLACE(States, ',', '</r><r>') + '</r>' AS XML) AS States,
CAST('<r>' + REPLACE(Products, ',', '</r><r>') + '</r>' AS XML) AS Products
FROM #tbVendor
)
SELECT
AgentId,
sTable.sColumn.value('.', 'VARCHAR(MAX)') AS States,
PTable.PColumn.value('.', 'VARCHAR(MAX)') AS Products
FROM cte
CROSS APPLY States.nodes('//r') AS sTable(sColumn)
CROSS APPLY Products.nodes('//r') AS PTable(PColumn)