T-SQL Split Function : Split Field By a Delimiter

Hi,

Today one of my colleagues in company faced a problem, He wants to split a text field by a delimiter character.

This motivate me to write a Split function for my own use and put it here for help others.

Suppose that our Primary Data is like this image and delimited by single slash ( / )

I created a Scalar Value T-SQL Function to create the string to be used in select statement, so the function will return a string which should be used in a select statement and the function itself doesn’t split data. result of this function should be used in a dynamic t-sql to return result as expected.

This is script of the function:

— ================================================
— This Function will generate script to be used
— in a select statement and fetch every delimited
— as a column
— Use it in this way: (Example)
—  declare @sql varchar(max)
— set @sql=’select ‘+dbo.SplitFieldByDelimiter(‘ZoneName’,’/’,8)
— +’ from [TVNZ_NDS].[Staging].[tmpImpressionExtract]’
—
— exec (@sql)
 — ================================================
SET ANSI_NULLS ON
GO
SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON
GO
— =============================================
— Author:        Reza Rad
— Version:     1.0
— Create date: 21/02/2012
— Description:    To Split a Delimited field by a Delimiter
— =============================================
CREATE FUNCTION dbo.SplitFieldByDelimiter
(
    @fieldname varchar(max)
    ,@delimiter varchar(max)
    ,@delimiter_count int
)
RETURNS varchar(max)
AS
BEGIN
    — variable declaration
    declare @first_index varchar(max)
    ,@next_index varchar(max)
    ,@sql_statement varchar(max)
    ,@term_statement varchar(max)
    ,@length varchar(max)
    ,@iterator int

    — initialization
    set @next_index=-1
    set @iterator=1
    set @sql_statement=’ ‘

    — code
    while(@iterator<=@delimiter_count)
    begin
        set @first_index=@next_index+’+1′
        set @next_index=’CHARINDEX(”’+@delimiter+”’,’+@fieldname+’,’+@first_index+’)’
        if (@iterator=@delimiter_count)
        begin
        set @next_index=’LEN(‘+@fieldname+’)+1′
        end
        set @length=@next_index+’-(‘+@first_index+’)’
        set @term_statement=’SubString(‘+@fieldname+’,’+@first_index+’,’+@length+’)’
        set @term_statement=’case when ‘+@next_index+’>0 then ‘+@term_statement+’ else ”nothing” end as Column’+CONVERT(varchar(max),@iterator)
        if (@iterator=1)
        begin
            set @sql_statement=@term_statement
        end
        else
        begin
            set @sql_statement=@sql_statement+’, ‘+@term_statement
        end

        set @iterator=@iterator+1
    end


    — Return the result of the function
    RETURN @sql_statement

END
GO

and This is they way we use it :

declare @sql varchar(max)
set @sql=’select top 1000 ‘+dbo.SplitFieldByDelimiter(‘DelimitedText’,’/’,8)
+’ from [TmpDataTable]’

exec (@sql)

So result will be like this :

In this version of Split function you need to enter number of occurrence of delimiter as function parameters, but I will solve it soon and publish version 2 without need for occurrence.

Hope it helps you all 🙂

P.S:

I created a CodePlex project for this Split function to work on it further.

CodePlex T-SQL Split url is :

http://tsqlsplit.codeplex.com/

Reza Rad

Trainer, Consultant, Mentor

Reza Rad is a Microsoft Regional Director, an Author, Trainer, Speaker and Consultant. He has a BSc in Computer engineering; he has more than 20 years’ experience in data analysis, BI, databases, programming, and development mostly on Microsoft technologies. He is a Microsoft Data Platform MVP for 12 continuous years (from 2011 till now) for his dedication in Microsoft BI. Reza is an active blogger and co-founder of RADACAD. Reza is also co-founder and co-organizer of Difinity conference in New Zealand, Power BI Summit, and Data Insight Summit.
Reza is author of more than 14 books on Microsoft Business Intelligence, most of these books are published under Power BI category. Among these are books such as Power BI DAX Simplified, Pro Power BI Architecture, Power BI from Rookie to Rock Star, Power Query books series, Row-Level Security in Power BI and etc.
He is an International Speaker in Microsoft Ignite, Microsoft Business Applications Summit, Data Insight Summit, PASS Summit, SQL Saturday and SQL user groups. And He is a Microsoft Certified Trainer.
Reza’s passion is to help you find the best data solution, he is Data enthusiast.
His articles on different aspects of technologies, especially on MS BI, can be found on his blog: https://radacad.com/blog.