SQL Server String Concatenation with Null

I am creating a computed column across fields of which some are potentially null.

The problem is that if any of those fields is null, the entire computed column will be null. I understand from the Microsoft documentation that this is expected and can be turned off via the setting SET CONCAT_NULL_YIELDS_NULL. However, there I don't want to change this default behavior because I don't know its implications on other parts of SQL Server.

Is there a way for me to just check if a column is null and only append its contents within the computed column formula if its not null?

You can use ISNULL(....)

SET @Concatenated = ISNULL(@Column1, '') + ISNULL(@Column2, '')

If the value of the column/expression is indeed NULL, then the second value specified (here: empty string) will be used instead.

From SQL Server 2012 this is all much easier with the CONCAT function.

It treats NULL as empty string

DECLARE @Column1 VARCHAR(50) = 'Foo',
        @Column2 VARCHAR(50) = NULL,
        @Column3 VARCHAR(50) = 'Bar';


SELECT CONCAT(@Column1,@Column2,@Column3); /*Returns FooBar*/

Use COALESCE. Instead of your_column use COALESCE(your_column, ''). This will return the empty string instead of NULL.

You can also use CASE - my code below checks for both null values and empty strings, and adds a seperator only if there is a value to follow:

SELECT OrganisationName, 
'Address' = 
CASE WHEN Addr1 IS NULL OR Addr1 = '' THEN '' ELSE Addr1 END + 
CASE WHEN Addr2 IS NULL OR Addr2 = '' THEN '' ELSE ', ' + Addr2 END + 
CASE WHEN Addr3 IS NULL OR Addr3 = '' THEN '' ELSE ', ' + Addr3 END + 
CASE WHEN County IS NULL OR County = '' THEN '' ELSE ', ' + County END 
FROM Organisations 

Use

SET CONCAT_NULL_YIELDS_NULL  OFF 

and concatenation of null values to a string will not result in null.

Please note that this is a deprecated option, avoid using. See the documentation for more details.

I just wanted to contribute this should someone be looking for help with adding separators between the strings, depending on whether a field is NULL or not.

So in the example of creating a one line address from separate fields

> Address1, Address2, Address3, City, PostCode

in my case, I have the following Calculated Column which seems to be working as I want it:

case 
    when [Address1] IS NOT NULL 
    then (((          [Address1]      + 
          isnull(', '+[Address2],'')) +
          isnull(', '+[Address3],'')) +
          isnull(', '+[City]    ,'')) +
          isnull(', '+[PostCode],'')  
end

Hope that helps someone!

ISNULL(ColumnName, '')

I had a lot of trouble with this too. Couldn't get it working using the case examples above, but this does the job for me:

Replace(rtrim(ltrim(ISNULL(Flat_no, '') + 
' ' + ISNULL(House_no, '') + 
' ' + ISNULL(Street, '') + 
' ' + ISNULL(Town, '') + 
' ' + ISNULL(City, ''))),'  ',' ')

Replace corrects the double spaces caused by concatenating single spaces with nothing between them. r/ltrim gets rid of any spaces at the ends.

In Sql Server:

insert into Table_Name(PersonName,PersonEmail) values(NULL,'[email protected]')

PersonName is varchar(50), NULL is not a string, because we are not passing with in single codes, so it treat as NULL.

Code Behind:

string name = (txtName.Text=="")? NULL : "'"+ txtName.Text +"'";
string email = txtEmail.Text;

insert into Table_Name(PersonName,PersonEmail) values(name,'"+email+"')

This example will help you to handle various types while creating insert statements

select 
'insert into doc(Id, CDate, Str, Code, Price, Tag )' + 
'values(' +
      '''' + convert(nvarchar(50), Id) + ''',' -- uniqueidentifier
    + '''' + LEFT(CONVERT(VARCHAR, CDate, 120), 10) + ''',' -- date
    + '''' + Str+ ''',' -- string
    + '''' + convert(nvarchar(50), Code)  + ''',' -- int
    + convert(nvarchar(50), Price) + ',' -- decimal
    + '''' + ISNULL(Tag, '''''') + '''' + ')'  -- nullable string

 from doc
 where CDate> '2019-01-01 00:00:00.000'