sqlcommatize

Why this project was created?

If you work a lot with SQL then you probably often have a situation that you're copying some column values (i.e. from SQL query result or Excel sheet) and then paste them into SQL IN clause.

For example you copy 3 rows from Excel that contains values 1, 2, 3.

SELECT * 
FROM foo
WHERE 1=1
AND ID IN (
    -- <the list of IDs that you paste>
    1
    2
    3
)

This is not a valid SQL syntax though.

In order for your query to work, you'll need to delimit your records with commas.

SELECT * 
FROM foo
WHERE 1=1
  AND ID IN (
    1,
    2,
    3
)

If ID is a string type, then you'll also need to wrap values with single quotes:

SELECT * FROM foo
WHERE ID IN (
    '1',
    '2',
    '3'
)

Handling large number of records manually becomes very cumbersome quickly.

sqlcommatize does the tedious work for you.

How does it work?

sqlcommatize is a command-line tool that:

• Reads the content of your clipboard
• Adds commas (and optionally single quotes) to records
• Pastes processed records back to clipboard

It is written in Golang and compiles to a single binary file. Multiplatform support (Linux, MacOS, Windows) is achieved thanks to golang.design/x/clipboard module.

Usage

Command

./sqlcommatize --help

prints available flags:

Usage of sqlcommatize:
  -leading_commas
        Use leading commas for separating rows (trailing commas used by default).
  -strings
        Wraps rows with single quotes (for SQL strings).

No arguments provided

When you run the application without any arguments, it uses default arguments:

• only commas are added (input is treated as numbers)
• trailing commas styling is used

For input:

1
2
3

running

./sqlcommatize

produces:

1,
2,
3

-strings flag

./sqlcommatize -strings

-strings flag wraps each record with single quotes:

'1',
'2',
'3'

If any records contains a single quotes, program replaces them with double single quotes:

What's up?
Foo
Bar

would be transformed into:

'What''s up?',
'Foo',
'Bar'

-leading_commas flag

-leading_commas changes the comma styling from trailing to leading:

1
,2
,3

Keyboard shortcuts

For usage convenience, you can create 2 keyboard shortcuts:

• one for numeric values /path/to/sqlcommatize (or optionally /path/to/sqlcommatize -leading_commas for leading commas)
• one for string values /path/to/sqlcommatize -strings (/path/to/sqlcommatize -leading_commas -strings)

and use them quickly whenever you need to paste some rows into SQL query.