How can I use optional parameters in a T-SQL stored procedure?

Question

I am creating a stored procedure to do a search through a table. I have many different search fields, all of which are optional. Is there a way to create a stored procedur

Answer 1

The answer from @KM is good as far as it goes but fails to fully follow up on one of his early bits of advice;

..., ignore compact code, ignore worrying about repeating code, ...

If you are looking to achieve the best performance then you should write a bespoke query for each possible combination of optional criteria. This might sound extreme, and if you have a lot of optional criteria then it might be, but performance is often a trade-off between effort and results. In practice, there might be a common set of parameter combinations that can be targeted with bespoke queries, then a generic query (as per the other answers) for all other combinations.

CREATE PROCEDURE spDoSearch
    @FirstName varchar(25) = null,
    @LastName varchar(25) = null,
    @Title varchar(25) = null
AS
BEGIN

    IF (@FirstName IS NOT NULL AND @LastName IS NULL AND @Title IS NULL)
        -- Search by first name only
        SELECT ID, FirstName, LastName, Title
        FROM tblUsers
        WHERE
            FirstName = @FirstName

    ELSE IF (@FirstName IS NULL AND @LastName IS NOT NULL AND @Title IS NULL)
        -- Search by last name only
        SELECT ID, FirstName, LastName, Title
        FROM tblUsers
        WHERE
            LastName = @LastName

    ELSE IF (@FirstName IS NULL AND @LastName IS NULL AND @Title IS NOT NULL)
        -- Search by title only
        SELECT ID, FirstName, LastName, Title
        FROM tblUsers
        WHERE
            Title = @Title

    ELSE IF (@FirstName IS NOT NULL AND @LastName IS NOT NULL AND @Title IS NULL)
        -- Search by first and last name
        SELECT ID, FirstName, LastName, Title
        FROM tblUsers
        WHERE
            FirstName = @FirstName
            AND LastName = @LastName

    ELSE
        -- Search by any other combination
        SELECT ID, FirstName, LastName, Title
        FROM tblUsers
        WHERE
                (@FirstName IS NULL OR (FirstName = @FirstName))
            AND (@LastName  IS NULL OR (LastName  = @LastName ))
            AND (@Title     IS NULL OR (Title     = @Title    ))

END

The advantage of this approach is that in the common cases handled by bespoke queries the query is as efficient as it can be - there's no impact by the unsupplied criteria. Also, indexes and other performance enhancements can be targeted at specific bespoke queries rather than trying to satisfy all possible situations.