How to set the result of a query as a queryable table? - mysql

Question

I am trying to use the result of a query as a table.
This query works fine:
SELECT date, number FROM `table_A`
The query below as well --> its result is table_B as a string of character not the table itself
SELECT nametable FROM `list_repository` WHERE id=1
But the combined one does not:
SELECT date, number FROM (SELECT nametable FROM `list_repository` WHERE id=1) A
I expect the resulting query to be
SELECT date, number FROM `table_B`
I tried to set a variable but it does not work either:
DECLARE x VARCHAR(150) ;
SET table=( SELECT `nametable` FROM `list_repository` WHERE id=1);
SELECT * from `table`. But it would not work
Thank you for your help!

Answer 1

Identifiers (db, table, column names etc) in SQL are static. Therefore you can't populate them at run-time. But you can build a query as a string and execute it via dynamic SQL. Something along the lines of
SET #sql = NULL;
SELECT CONCAT("SELECT * FROM ", nametable)
INTO #sql
FROM list_repository
WHERE id = 1;
PREPARE stmt FROM #sql;
EXECUTE stmt;
DEALLOCATE PREPARE stmt;
An example of wrapping it up into a stored procedure
DELIMITER //
CREATE PROCEDURE sp1 (IN id INT)
BEGIN
SET #sql = NULL;
SELECT CONCAT("SELECT * FROM ", nametable)
INTO #sql
FROM list_repository
WHERE id = id;
SELECT #sql;
PREPARE stmt FROM #sql;
EXECUTE stmt;
DEALLOCATE PREPARE stmt;
END//
And then invoking it
CALL sp1(1);