Searching for multiple values in 1 query - mysql

Question

If I have a database having 2 fields, Roll no and name and I have a list (of n values) of roll numbers for which I have to search the corresponding names.
Can this be done using just one query in SQL or HQL?

Answer 1

SELECT name FROM [table] WHERE id IN ([list of ids])
where [list of ids] is for example 2,3,5,7.

Answer 2

Use the IN operator and separate your Roll no's by a comma.
SELECT name
FROM yourtable
WHERE [Roll no] IN (1, 2, 3, 4, etc)

Answer 3

You can use the IN statement as shown above.
There are a couple of minor issues with this. It can perform poorly if the number of values in the clause gets too large.
The second issue is that in many development environments you land up needing to dynamically create the query with a variable number of items (or a variable number of placeholders if using parameterised queries). While not difficult if does make your code look messy and mean you haven't got a nice neat piece of SQL that you can copy out and use to test.
But examples (using php).
Here the IN is just dynamically created with the SQL. Assuming the roll numbers can only be integers it is applying intval() to each member of the array to avoid any non integer values being used in the SQL.
<?php
$list_of_roll_no = array(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9);
$sql = "SELECT FROM some_table WHERE `Roll no` IN (".implode(", ", array_map ('intval', $list_of_roll_no)).")";
?>
Using mysqli bound parameters is a bit messy. This is because the bind parameter statement expects a variable number of parameters. The 2nd parameter onwards are the values to be bound, and it expects them to be passed by reference. So the foreach here is used to generate an array of references:-
<?php
$list_of_roll_no = array(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9);
if ($stmt = $mysqli->prepare("SELECT FROM some_table WHERE `Roll no` IN (".implode(",", array_fill(0, count($list_of_roll_no), '?')).")"))
{
$bind_arguments = [];
$bind_arguments[] = str_repeat("i", count($list_of_roll_no));
foreach ($list_of_roll_no as $list_of_roll_no_key => $list_of_roll_no_value)
{
$bind_arguments[] = & $list_of_roll_no[$list_of_roll_no_key]; # bind to array ref, not to the temporary $recordvalue
}
call_user_func_array(array($statement, 'bind_param'), $bind_arguments);
$statement->execute();
}
?>
Another solution is to push all the values into another table. Can be a temp table. Then you use an INNER JOIN between your table and your temp table to find the matching values. Depending on what you already have in place then this is quite easy to do (eg, I have a php class to insert multiple records easily - I just keep passing them across and the class batches them up and inserts them occasionally to avoid repeatedly hitting the database).