Escaping strings containing single quotes in PowerShell ready for SQL query

Question

I am trying to run the following query, which takes someone's name and attempts to insert it into an SQL Server database table.

$name = "Ronnie O'Sullivan"

$dataSource = "127.0.0.1"
$database = "Danny"
$connectionString = "Server=$dataSource;Database=$database;Integrated Security=True;"

$connection = New-Object System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection
$connection.ConnectionString = $connectionString
$connection.Open()

$query = "INSERT INTO People(name) VALUES('$name')"

$command = $connection.CreateCommand()
$command.CommandText = $query
$command.ExecuteNonQuery()

$connection.Close()

The problem I am facing is that the single quote is causing an issue in my query. The query is being executed as

INSERT INTO People(name) VALUES('Ronnie O'Sullivan')

which causes an SQL syntax error.

My question is how do I escape my $name variable so that it renders on the SQL side.

One solution is to do a find and replace on my $name variable, find: ' replace: ''

$name.Replace("'", "''")

Is there a more elegant solution out there, or a function that I can't seem to find?

Thank you.

Answer 1

You can try to update your code to to use a parametrised value that will cope with quotes in a string:

$query = "INSERT INTO People(name) VALUES(@name)"

$command = $connection.CreateCommand()
$command.CommandText = $query
$command.Parameters.Add("@name", $name)  -- | Out-Null (may be required on the end)
$command.ExecuteNonQuery()

I'm not experienced with powershell but referenced this post for a parametrised query: