I have a table with multiple nullable string fields.
For reporting I would like to combine them into a single string that is delimited with a space for every field. The right side must be trimmed.
Test data:
DECLARE
@test
TABLE
(
f1 NVARCHAR(100)
, f2 NVARCHAR(100)
, f3 NVARCHAR(100)
)
INSERT INTO @test
-- NULL values must be skipped
SELECT NULL , NULL , NULL
UNION SELECT NULL , NULL , 'foo'
UNION SELECT NULL , 'foo', NULL
UNION SELECT 'foo' , NULL , NULL
UNION SELECT NULL , 'foo', 'bar'
UNION SELECT 'foo' , 'bar', NULL
UNION SELECT 'foo' , NULL , 'bar'
UNION SELECT 'foo' , 'bar', 'baz'
-- Empty string values must be skipped
UNION SELECT 'foo' , '' , 'bar'
UNION SELECT '' , '' , 'baz'
-- Spaces in values must be kept
UNION SELECT 'foo bar', '' , 'baz'
-- The table should not contain values with surrounding space
-- So this case is not important
UNION SELECT ' foo ' , ' ' , 'baz '
The expected results:
''
'foo'
'foo'
'foo'
'foo bar'
'foo bar'
'foo bar'
'foo bar baz'
'foo bar'
'baz'
'foo bar baz'
'foo baz'
' foo baz' -- This is optional
My current code:
SELECT
RTRIM(
CASE WHEN ISNULL(f1, '') = '' THEN '' ELSE f1 + ' ' END
+ CASE WHEN ISNULL(f2, '') = '' THEN '' ELSE f2 + ' ' END
+ CASE WHEN ISNULL(f3, '') = '' THEN '' ELSE f3 + ' ' END
)
FROM
@test
This works, but I was wondering if there is a less verbose way to achieve this?
In SQL Server 2012, there is a CONCAT function. You can use the following as well:
SELECT
RTRIM(CONCAT(
NULLIF(f1, '') + ' '
, NULLIF(f2, '') + ' '
, NULLIF(f3, '') + ' '
))
FROM
@test