How to get substring in SQLIte?
database, sqlite
Solution
Use the `substr` function.
From the list of core functions:
`substr(X,Y,Z) substr(X,Y) substring(X,Y,Z) substring(X,Y)`
The `substr(X,Y,Z)` function returns a substring of input string `X` that begins with the `Y-th` character and which is `Z` characters long. If `Z` is omitted then `substr(X,Y)` returns all characters through the end of the string `X` beginning with the `Y-th`. The left-most character of `X` is number 1. If `Y` is negative then the first character of the substring is found by counting from the right rather than the left. If `Z` is negative then the `abs(Z)` characters preceding the `Y-th` character are returned. If `X` is a string then characters indices refer to actual UTF-8 characters. If `X` is a BLOB then the indices refer to bytes.
`substring()` is an alias for `substr()` beginning with SQLite version 3.34.
Problem
I retrieve quite a lot of data from SQLite database. When retrieving I map it to different views in my application. There is a text field in my table from which I don't want to get the full text, just first n chars. So if my query for example is: ``` Select description from articles where id='29'; ``` Then how do I get the substring from description? thanks