How to use Prepared statements when searching an unknown number of values

[Mark Wa]

Hello, I would like to use a prepared statements to do a select statement, however I do not know how many values I would need to compare against until runtime.

The statement would look like this

select * from table where column name like 'value1' or 'value2' or 'value3'

but I do not know how many values I may need to add in as the user will be selecting them. Currently I have built the statement as a string, but I need it to be resisteant against sql injection attacks.

Thanks,

[Campbell Ritchie]

Welcome to JavaRanch

Have you got such queries working at the command line? Can you display details of tables and their columns so you could choose columns to enter into your statements?

[Paul Sturrock]

JDBC doesn't have a setArrayOfValues method (this is a driver/database restriction) so you'll have to do it yourself. You'll probably have to build your SQL dynamically (as you would a Statement) and keep track of the values passes to the query criteria then bind them at the end. So two loops should do it. To make things easier you might find that "in" clauses are easier to manage than multiple or conditions.

[Mark Wa]

Paul Sturrock wrote:JDBC doesn't have a setArrayOfValues method (this is a driver/database restriction) so you'll have to do it yourself. You'll probably have to build your SQL dynamically (as you would a Statement) and keep track of the values passes to the query criteria then bind them at the end. So two loops should do it. To make things easier you might find that "in" clauses are easier to manage than multiple or conditions.

Would this not be inefficient? as a prepared statement is somehow stored, so that the database knows how to best access the data prior to the query being run

[John Kimball]

The efficiency of the prepared statement really only comes into play if the same SQL query is reused in bulk--that is it needs to be re-used dozens, hundreds, or thousands of times in one session--in which case the same instance of the prepared statement is supposed to be re-used.

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

See my article on select batching for the JavaRanch Journal. I wrote it in 2005, but it everything in it is still true.