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Best way to do this

Author

Topic

helixpoint
Constraint Violating Yak Guru

291 Posts

Posted - 2013-10-09 : 11:00:59

This is a function that I wrote to format a persons name and ID. I have to take into account that every parm may be empty. Is there a better way to do this SQL 2008 R2


	DECLARE @LastName varchar(100) = 'Smith',
	 @FirstName varchar(100) = 'donna',
	 @MiddleInitial varchar(1) = 'L',
	 @NameSuffix varchar(4) = '',
	 @IdNum int = 12345


		select 
			@LastName + (case when @LastName <> '' and @FirstName <> '' then ', ' else '' end) + 
				@FirstName + (case when @LastName + @FirstName <> '' and @MiddleInitial <> '' then ' ' else '' end) +
				@MiddleInitial + (case when @LastName + @Firstname + @MiddleInitial <> '' and @NameSuffix <> '' then ' ' else '' end) +
				@NameSuffix + ' (' + CAST(@IdNum as varchar) + ')'

Dave
Helixpoint Web Development
http://www.helixpoint.com

visakh16
Very Important crosS Applying yaK Herder

52326 Posts

Posted - 2013-10-09 : 13:21:29

In SQL 2012 you can use CONCAT

In sql 2008 R2 only other option would be to use COALESCE


SELECT COALESCE(LastName + ', ','') + COALESCE(FirstName + ' ','') + COALESCE(MiddleInitial + ' ','') + '(' + CAST(IdNum AS varchar) + ')' FROM Table

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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James K
Master Smack Fu Yak Hacker

3873 Posts

Posted - 2013-10-09 : 14:05:41

Effectively what you have done is ok. You might be able to use COALESCE and NULLIF and so on to make it look a little bit more dense, for example like shown below (which by the way, is not as comprehensive as yours)

SELECT 
	COALESCE(NULLIF(@LastName,'')+', ','') + 
	COALESCE(NULLIF(@FirstName,'')+ ' ','') +
	COALESCE(NULLIF(@MiddleInitial,'') + ' ','') + 
	COALESCE(NULLIF(@NameSuffix,'') + ' ','') + 
	COALESCE('('+NULLIF(CAST(@IdNum AS VARCHAR(32)),'')+')','')

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