SQL string value spanning multiple lines in query

Question

UPDATE: the bio may contain apostrophes (see updated example)

I have an SQL query that has a value which spans multiple lines and it causes the query to fail:

UPDATE User SET UserId=12345, Name="J Doe", Location="USA", Bio="I'm a
bio that has an apostrophe, and I'm 
spanning multiple lines!" 
WHERE UserId=12345

In C# you can put an @ before the string Bio=@"..." in order to allow it to span multiple lines, but I'm not sure how the same thing can be achieved with SQL queries. How do you get a string to span multiple lines without having to do things like manually concatenating the strings:

Bio="I'm a"
+" bio that has an apostrophe, and I'm"
+" spanning multiple lines!" 

Answer 1

SQL Server allows the following (be careful to use single quotes instead of double)

UPDATE User
SET UserId = 12345
   , Name = 'J Doe'
   , Location = 'USA'
   , Bio='my bio
spans 
multiple
lines!'
WHERE UserId = 12345

Answer 2

What's the column "BIO" datatype? What database server (sql/oracle/mysql)? You should be able to span over multiple lines all you want as long as you adhere to the character limit in the column's datatype (ie: varchar(200) ). Try using single quotes, that might make a difference. This works for me:

update table set mycolumn = 'hello world,
my name is carlos.
goodbye.'
where id = 1;

Also, you might want to put in checks for single quotes if you are concatinating the sql string together in C#. If the variable contains single quotes that could escape the code out of the sql statement, therefore, not doing all the lines you were expecting to see.

BTW, you can delimit your SQL statements with a semi colon like you do in C#, just as FYI.

Answer 3

with your VARCHAR, you may also need to specify the length, or its usually good to

What about grabbing the text, making a sting of it, then putting it into the query witrh

String TableName = "ComplicatedTableNameHere";  
EditText editText1 = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.EditTextIDhere); 
String editTextString1 = editText1.getText().toString();  

BROKEN DOWN

String TableName = "ComplicatedTableNameHere";            
    //sets the table name as a string so you can refer to TableName instead of writing out your table name everytime

EditText editText1 = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.EditTextIDhere); 
    //gets the text from your edit text fieldfield 
    //editText1 = your edit text name
    //EditTextIDhere = the id of your text field

String editTextString1 = editText1.getText().toString();  
    //sets the edit text as a string
    //editText1 is the name of the Edit text from the (EditText) we defined above
    //editTextString1 = the string name you will refer to in future

then use

       /* Insert data to a Table*/
       myDB.execSQL("INSERT INTO "
         + TableName
         + " (Column_Name, Column_Name2, Column_Name3, Column_Name4)"
         + " VALUES ( "+EditTextString1+", 'Column_Value2','Column_Value3','Column_Value4');");

Hope this helps some what...

NOTE each string is within

'"+stringname+"'

its the 'and' that enable the multi line element of the srting, without it you just get the first line, not even sure if you get the whole line, it may just be the first word

Answer 4

I prefer to use the @ symbol so I see the query exactly as I can copy and paste into a query file:

string name = "Joe";
string gender = "M";
string query = String.Format(@"
SELECT
   *
FROM
   tableA
WHERE
   Name = '{0}' AND
   Gender = '{1}'", name, gender);

It's really great with long complex queries. Nice thing is it keeps tabs and line feeds so pasting into a query browser retains the nice formatting