I’ve recently written a post on how to split a delimited string in SQL, now I need to do the reverse and take the flat table and create a delimited string.
Fortunately creating a delimited string is far simpler than splitting a delimited string.
Assuming we have a flat table called CountryUsers with the following structure:
| Country | User |
| UK | Bob |
| UK | Fred |
| UK | Bill |
| USA | Mike |
| USA | Lou |
| USA | Carol |
| USA | Sam |
To convert this table into a 2 record table, one for each country, with a comma delimited string of users, run the following SQL:
SELECT DISTINCT a.Country
,STUFF(
(SELECT ‘,’ + b.[User]
FROM CountryUsers b
WHERE b.Country = a.Country
FOR XML PATH (”))
,1,1,”) as UsersPerCountry
FROM CountryUsers a
The output from that SQL are 2 comma separated strings:
| Country | UsersPerCountry |
| UK | Bob,Fred,Bill |
| USA | Mike,Lou,Carol,Sam |
To delimit the string by an alternative delimited, such as a pipe delimiter or semi colon delimiter, change the comma next to the SELECT in the STUFF function to the alternative delimiter, for example SELECT ‘|’ +…
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