Is there a way to choose a table in an INSERT INTO clause with a conditional?

Question

I have two tables, we can call them table1 and table2, and a variable to determine which table to INSERT INTO. I want to do something like this:

DECLARE @intoTable2 BIT = 0;
INSERT INTO
    IF @intoTable2 = 1
        table2
    ELSE
        table1
--put column names and values here...

All of the column names between the two tables are the same except the first one, so I would also need a corresponding IF statement for the first column as well. (I could just write out two INSERT INTO statements and wrap them in an IF-ELSE clause, but there are a lot of column names, and I'm just trying to keep it from being too clunky.

Answer 1

but there are a lot of column names, and I'm just trying to keep it from being too clunky.

It's not always possible in TSQL to avoid cut-and-paste. Keep the long column list on one line to enable cut-and-paste and not waste vertical space

In TSQL the INSERT would come after the IF.

DECLARE @intoTable2 BIT = 0;
IF @intoTable2 = 1
BEGIN
    INSERT INTO table2 ( ... )
    values ( ... );
END
ELSE
BEGIN
    INSERT INTO table2 ( ... )
    values ( ... );
END

Or you could use dynamic sql

declare @sql = concat(N'insert into ', case when @intoTable2 = 0 then 'table1' else 'table2' end, ' values ...')
  --print(@sql)  
  exec (@sql)