How to tell in a Query I don't want duplicates? - sql

Question

So I got this query and it's pulling from tables like this:
Plantation TABLE
PLANT ID, Color Description
1 Red
2 Green
3 Purple
Vegetable Table
VegetabkeID, PLANT ID, Feeldesc
199 1 Harsh
200 1 Sticky
201 2 Bitter
202 3 Bland
and now in my Query I join them using PLANT ID ( I Use a left join)
PLANT ID, Color Description, Feeldesc
1 Red Harsh
1 Red Sticky
2 Green Bitter
3 Purple Bland
So the problem is that in the Query you can see Red shows up twice! I can't have this, and
I'm not sure how to make the joins happen but stop reds from coming up twice.

Answer 1

It seems remotely possible that you're asking how do to group indication -- that is, showing a value which identifies or describes a group only on the first line of that group. In that case, you want to use the lag() window function.
Assuming setup of the schema and data is like this:
create table plant (plantId int not null primary key, color text not null);
create table vegetable (vegetableId int not null, plantId int not null,
Feeldesc text not null, primary key (vegetableId, plantId));
insert into plant values (1,'Red'),(2,'Green'),(3,'Purple');
insert into vegetable values (199,1,'Harsh'),(200,1,'Sticky'),
(201,2,'Bitter'),(202,3,'Bland');
The results you show (modulus column headings) could be obtained with this simple query:
select p.plantId, p.color, v.Feeldesc
from plant p left join vegetable v using (plantId)
order by plantId, vegetableId;
If you're looking to suppress display of the repeated information after the first line, this query will do it:
select
case when plantId = lag(plantId) over w then null
else plantId end as plantId,
case when p.color = lag(p.color) over w then null
else p.color end as color,
v.Feeldesc
from plant p left join vegetable v using (plantId)
window w as (partition by plantId order by vegetableId);
The results look like this:
plantid | color | feeldesc
---------+--------+----------
1 | Red | Harsh
| | Sticky
2 | Green | Bitter
3 | Purple | Bland
(4 rows)
I had to do something like the above just this week to produce a listing directly out of psql which was easy for the end user to read; otherwise it never would have occurred to me that you might be asking about this functionality. Hopefully this answers your question, although I might be completely off base.

Answer 2

Check array_agg function in the documentation it can be used something like this:
SELECT
v.plantId
,v.color
,array_to_string(array_agg(v.Feeldesc),', ')
FROM
vegetable
INNER JOIN plant USING (plantId)
GROUP BY
v.plantId
,v.color
or use
SELECT DISTINCT
v.plantId
,v.color
FROM
vegetable
INNER JOIN plant USING (plantId)
disclaimer: hand written, syntax errors expected :)