Can you split/explode a field in a MySQL query?

Question

I have to create a report on some student completions. The students each belong to one client. Here are the tables (simplified for this question).

CREATE TAB         


        

Answer 1

You can create a function for this:

/**
* Split a string by string (Similar to the php function explode())
*
* @param VARCHAR(12) delim The boundary string (delimiter).
* @param VARCHAR(255) str The input string.
* @param INT pos The index of the string to return
* @return VARCHAR(255) The (pos)th substring
* @return VARCHAR(255) Returns the [pos]th string created by splitting the str parameter on boundaries formed by the delimiter.
* @{@example
*     SELECT SPLIT_STRING('|', 'one|two|three|four', 1);
*     This query
* }
*/
DROP FUNCTION IF EXISTS SPLIT_STRING;
CREATE FUNCTION SPLIT_STRING(delim VARCHAR(12), str VARCHAR(255), pos INT)
RETURNS VARCHAR(255) DETERMINISTIC
RETURN
    REPLACE(
        SUBSTRING(
            SUBSTRING_INDEX(str, delim, pos),
            LENGTH(SUBSTRING_INDEX(str, delim, pos-1)) + 1
        ),
        delim, ''
    );

Converting the magical pseudocode to use this, you would have:

SELECT e.`studentId`, SPLIT_STRING(',', c.`courseNames`, e.`courseId`)
FROM...