sqloracle-databaseconcatenationpivotstring-aggregation

How can I combine multiple rows into a comma-delimited list in Oracle?


I have a simple query:

select * from countries

with the following results:

country_name
------------
Albania
Andorra
Antigua
.....

I would like to return the results in one row, so like this:

Albania, Andorra, Antigua, ...

Of course, I can write a PL/SQL function to do the job (I already did in Oracle 10g), but is there a nicer, preferably non-Oracle-specific solution (or may be a built-in function) for this task?

I would generally use it to avoid multiple rows in a sub-query, so if a person has more then one citizenship, I do not want her/him to be a duplicate in the list.

My question is based on the similar question on SQL server 2005.

UPDATE: My function looks like this:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION APPEND_FIELD (sqlstr in varchar2, sep in varchar2 ) return varchar2 is
ret varchar2(4000) := '';
TYPE cur_typ IS REF CURSOR;
rec cur_typ;
field varchar2(4000);
begin
     OPEN rec FOR sqlstr;
     LOOP
         FETCH rec INTO field;
         EXIT WHEN rec%NOTFOUND;
         ret := ret || field || sep;
     END LOOP;
     if length(ret) = 0 then
          RETURN '';
     else
          RETURN substr(ret,1,length(ret)-length(sep));
     end if;
end;

Solution

  • Here is a simple way without stragg or creating a function.

    create table countries ( country_name varchar2 (100));
    
    insert into countries values ('Albania');
    
    insert into countries values ('Andorra');
    
    insert into countries values ('Antigua');
    
    
    SELECT SUBSTR (SYS_CONNECT_BY_PATH (country_name , ','), 2) csv
          FROM (SELECT country_name , ROW_NUMBER () OVER (ORDER BY country_name ) rn,
                       COUNT (*) OVER () cnt
                  FROM countries)
         WHERE rn = cnt
    START WITH rn = 1
    CONNECT BY rn = PRIOR rn + 1;
    
    CSV                                                                             
    --------------------------
    Albania,Andorra,Antigua                                                         
    
    1 row selected.
    

    As others have mentioned, if you are on 11g R2 or greater, you can now use listagg which is much simpler.

    select listagg(country_name,', ') within group(order by country_name) csv
      from countries;
    
    CSV                                                                             
    --------------------------
    Albania, Andorra, Antigua
    
    1 row selected.