Output a comma separated list in T-SQL - sql

Question

I have a table with phone numbers in it. Instead of spitting out a single row for each number I want to return a comma separated list of phone numbers. What's the easiest way to do this in sql? A while loop?

Answer 1

Some of those answers are overly complicated with coalesce and more complex XML queries. I use this all the time:
select #Phones=(
Select PhoneColumn+','
From TableName
For XML Path(''))
-- Remove trailing comma if necessary
select #Phones=left(#Phones,len(#Phones)-1)

Answer 2

You could create a UDF that would do something like this
CREATE FUNCTION dbo.GetBirthdays(#UserId INT)
RETURNS VARCHAR(MAX)
AS
BEGIN
DECLARE #combined VARCHAR(MAX)
SELECT #combined = COALESCE(#combined + ', ' + colName + ', colName)
FROM YourTable
WHERE UserId = #UserId
ORDER BY ColName
END
Basically this just pulls all of the values into a simple list.

Answer 3

FWIW I created a SQL CLR Aggregate function. Works like a champ!
[Serializable]
[SqlUserDefinedAggregate(Format.UserDefined,
Name = "JoinStrings",
IsInvariantToNulls=true,
IsInvariantToDuplicates=false,
IsInvariantToOrder=false,
MaxByteSize=8000)] public struct
JoinStrings : IBinarySerialize {
public string Result;
public void Init()
{
Result = "";
}
public void Accumulate(SqlString value)
{
if (value.IsNull)
return;
Result += value.Value + ",";
}
public void Merge(JoinStrings Group)
{
Result += Group.Result;
}
public SqlString Terminate()
{
return new SqlString(Result.ToString().Trim(new
char[] { ',' }));
}
public void Read(System.IO.BinaryReader r)
{
Result = r.ReadString();
}
public void Write(System.IO.BinaryWriter w)
{
w.Write(Result.ToString());
} }
I can then use it like this:
SELECT dbo.JoinStrings(Phone) FROM Phones Where UserID = XXX

Answer 4

See my answer from this question. There are a couple of other ways to do it listed in that question also. COALESCE or for xml path should do the trick though.
Edit (added my answer from the previous question):
CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[fn_MyFunction]()RETURNS NVARCHAR(MAX)
AS
BEGIN
DECLARE #str NVARCHAR(MAX)
DECLARE #Delimiter CHAR(2)
SET #Delimiter = ', '
SELECT #str = COALESCE(#str + #Delimiter,'') + AColumn
FROM dbo.myTable
RETURN RTRIM(LTRIM(#str))
END

Answer 5

Assuming you have a Customers table which has a unique ID and another table named PhoneNumbers with multiple phone numbers for each customer sharing the Customer ID field as a Foreign Key this would work using a correlated sub-Query
Select C.ID, C.FirstName, C.LastName,
(select (STUFF(( SELECT ', ' + PhoneNumber from PhoneNumbers P where P.CID = C.ID
FOR XML PATH('')), 1, 2, ''))) as PhoneNumbers
from Customers C

Answer 6

Select Unique ID, Replace(Rtrim(Ltrim(Case when [Phone_Number1] is not null Then [Phone_Number1]+' ' Else '' End +
Case when [Phone_Number2] is not null Then [Phone_Number2]+' ' Else '' End +
Case when [Phone_Number3] is not null Then [Phone_Number3]+' ' Else '' End)),' ',', ') as Phone_numbers
From MYTable
Hope this is what you are looking for and I dont know if this will help you so far after the question.