SQL Stored Procedure LIKE

Question

This is a simple question and I can't seem to think of a solution.

I have this defined in my stored procedure:

@communityDesc varchar(255) = NULL

@communityDesc is "aaa,bbb,ccc"

and in my actual query I am trying to use IN

WHERE AREA IN (@communityDesc)

but this will not work because my commas are inside the string instead of like this "aaa", "bbb", "ccc"

So my question is, is there anything I can do to @communityDesc so it will work with my IN statement, like reformat the string?

Answer 1

This article could help you by your problem:

http://sqlperformance.com/2012/07/t-sql-queries/split-strings

In this article Aaron Bertrand is writing about your problem. It's really long and very detailed.

One Way would be this:

CREATE FUNCTION dbo.SplitStrings_XML
(
   @List       NVARCHAR(MAX),
   @Delimiter  NVARCHAR(255)
)
RETURNS TABLE
WITH SCHEMABINDING
AS
   RETURN 
   (  
      SELECT Item = y.i.value('(./text())[1]', 'nvarchar(4000)')
      FROM 
      ( 
        SELECT x = CONVERT(XML, '<i>' 
          + REPLACE(@List, @Delimiter, '</i><i>') 
          + '</i>').query('.')
      ) AS a CROSS APPLY x.nodes('i') AS y(i)
   );
GO

With this function you only call:

WHERE AREA IN (SELECT Item FROM dbo.SplitStrings_XML(@communityDesc, N','))

Hope this could help you.