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;
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.