need to get description of id from another table which are pipe separated - sql

Question

I have two tables table1 and table2
in table1 there is a column with name typeids in which ids are pipe separated
ex: 2|3|4 --> these ids are the primary key in table2
table2 contains Id, Description which has data like
2-text1
3-text2
4-text3
now I need to get the table1 contents but 2|3|4 will be replaced by
text1|text2|text3

Answer 1

This is a really poor design of your database and as others have said you should do your level best to get it changed.
That said, this is possible. It is just ugly as sin and I am sure performs like a dog, but you can blame that on your database designer. In short, you need to split your id string on the | character, join each element to your table2 and then concatenate them all back together using for xml. As you are using SQL Server 2016 you can use STRING_SPLIT instead of the function I have used below, though as I don't currently have access to a 2016 box here we are (Working example):
create function dbo.StringSplit
(
#str nvarchar(4000) = ' ' -- String to split.
,#delimiter as nvarchar(1) = ',' -- Delimiting value to split on.
,#num as int = null -- Which value to return.
)
returns table
as
return
(
-- Start tally table with 10 rows.
with n(n) as (select n from (values(1),(1),(1),(1),(1),(1),(1),(1),(1),(1)) n(n))
-- Select the same number of rows as characters in isnull(#str,'') as incremental row numbers.
-- Cross joins increase exponentially to a max possible 10,000 rows to cover largest isnull(#str,'') length.
,t(t) as (select top (select len(isnull(#str,'')) a) row_number() over (order by (select null)) from n n1,n n2,n n3,n n4)
-- Return the position of every value that follows the specified delimiter.
,s(s) as (select 1 union all select t+1 from t where substring(isnull(#str,''),t,1) = #delimiter)
-- Return the start and length of every value, to use in the SUBSTRING function.
-- ISNULL/NULLIF combo handles the last value where there is no delimiter at the end of the string.
,l(s,l) as (select s,isnull(nullif(charindex(#delimiter,isnull(#str,''),s),0)-s,4000) from s)
select rn as ItemNumber
,Item
from(select row_number() over(order by s) as rn
,substring(isnull(#str,''),s,l) as item
from l
) a
where rn = #num -- Return a specific value where specified,
or #num is null -- Or everything where not.
)
go
declare #t1 table (id varchar(10));
insert into #t1 values
('2|3|4')
,('5|6|7');
declare #t2 table (id varchar(1), description varchar(10));
insert into #t2 values
('2','text1')
,('3','text2')
,('4','text3')
,('5','text4')
,('6','text5')
,('7','text6')
;
select t1.id
,stuff((select '|' + t2.description
from #t1 as t1a
cross apply dbo.StringSplit(t1a.id,'|',null) as s
join #t2 as t2
on s.Item = t2.id
where t1.id = t1a.id
for xml path('')
),1,1,''
) as t
from #t1 as t1;
Output:
+-------+-------------------+
| id | t |
+-------+-------------------+
| 2|3|4 | text1|text2|text3 |
| 5|6|7 | text4|text5|text6 |
+-------+-------------------+