SQL Server (2008) Pass ArrayList or String to SP for IN()

I was wondering how I can pass either an ArrayList, List<int> or StringBuilder comma delimited list to a stored procedure such that I find a list of IDs using IN():

@myList varchar(50)

SELECT  *
FROM    tbl
WHERE   Id IN (@myList)

In C# I am currently building the list as a string which is comma delimeted; however when using nvarchar(50) for example, as the type for the param in the stored procedure – I get an error as it can’t convert ‘1,2,3’ to int which it expects between the IN().

Any ideas? Much appreciated.

Pete

Answers:

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Method 1

You could use a User Defined function such as

CREATE function [dbo].[csl_to_table] ( @list nvarchar(MAX) )
RETURNS @list_table TABLE ([id] INT)
AS
BEGIN
    DECLARE     @index INT,
            @start_index INT,
            @id INT

    SELECT @index = 1 
    SELECT @start_index = 1
    WHILE @index <= DATALENGTH(@list)
    BEGIN

        IF SUBSTRING(@list,@index,1) = ','
        BEGIN

            SELECT @id = CAST(SUBSTRING(@list, @start_index, @index - @start_index ) AS INT)
            INSERT @list_table ([id]) VALUES (@id)
            SELECT @start_index = @index + 1
        END
        SELECT @index  = @index + 1
    END
    SELECT @id = CAST(SUBSTRING(@list, @start_index, @index - @start_index ) AS INT)
    INSERT @list_table ([id]) VALUES (@id)
    RETURN
END

Which accepts an nvarchar comma separated list of ids and returns a table of those ids as ints. You can then join on the returned table in your stored procedure like so –

DECLARE @passed_in_ids TABLE (id INT)

INSERT INTO @passed_in_ids (id)
  SELECT 
    id 
  FROM
    [dbo].[csl_to_table] (@your_passed_in_csl)

SELECT *
FROM 
myTable
INNER JOIN
@passed_in_ids ids
ON
myTable.id = ids.id

Method 2

In SQL 2008 there are table-valued-parameters, that make a friendly alternative to parsing CSV; see here for an example.

Otherwise, another option is xml – the xml data type in SQL Server allows you to read this pretty easily (although it takes more transfer bytes).

All methods was sourced from stackoverflow.com or stackexchange.com, is licensed under cc by-sa 2.5, cc by-sa 3.0 and cc by-sa 4.0