SQL Server Dynamic Order By

Passing dynamic order by in stored procedure

You can use a complicated order by clause. That requires one case for each sort direction and each data type. With this example dataset:

create table t1 (id int, name varchar(50), created date);
insert t1 values 
    (1, 'Chihiro Ogino', '2012-01-01'), 
    (2, 'Spirit of the Kohaku River', '2012-01-03'), 
    (3, 'Yubaba', '2012-01-02');

You could use an order by clause like:

declare @sortColumn varchar(50) = 'created'
declare @sortOrder varchar(50) = 'DESC'

select  *
from    t1
order by
        case
        when @sortOrder <> 'ASC' then 0
        when @sortColumn = 'id' then id
        end ASC
,       case
        when @sortOrder <> 'ASC' then ''
        when @sortColumn = 'name' then name
        end ASC
,       case
        when @sortOrder <> 'ASC' then cast(null as date)
        when @sortColumn = 'created' then created
        end ASC
,       case
        when @sortOrder <> 'DESC' then 0
        when @sortColumn = 'id' then id
        end DESC
,       case
        when @sortOrder <> 'DESC' then ''
        when @sortColumn = 'name' then name
        end DESC
,       case
        when @sortOrder <> 'DESC' then cast(null as date)
        when @sortColumn = 'created' then created
        end DESC

Working example at SQL Fiddle.

Another option is to create the query dynamically, and run it with exec. For example:

declare @sql nvarchar(max)
set @sql = 'select * from YourTable order by ' + @sortColumn + ' ' + @sortDir
exec (@sql)

Dynamic order direction

You could have two near-identical ORDER BY items, one ASC and one DESC, and extend your CASE statement to make one or other of them always equal a single value:

ORDER BY
      CASE WHEN @OrderDirection = 0 THEN 1
      ELSE
           CASE WHEN @OrderByColumn = 'AddedDate' THEN CONVERT(varchar(50), AddedDate)
                WHEN @OrderByColumn = 'Visible' THEN CONVERT(varchar(2), Visible)
                WHEN @OrderByColumn = 'AddedBy' THEN AddedBy
                WHEN @OrderByColumn = 'Title' THEN Title
           END
      END ASC,
      CASE WHEN @OrderDirection = 1 THEN 1
      ELSE
           CASE WHEN @OrderByColumn = 'AddedDate' THEN CONVERT(varchar(50), AddedDate)
                WHEN @OrderByColumn = 'Visible' THEN CONVERT(varchar(2), Visible)
                WHEN @OrderByColumn = 'AddedBy' THEN AddedBy           
                WHEN @OrderByColumn = 'Title' THEN Title
           END
      END DESC

Dynamic Order By clause with column and sort information coming from a table?

This will only work if you are using dynamic SQL. I was not able to get it to work as-is.

Dynamic sorting by column depending on value in column

To answer. I did finally find the solution. It was quite simple and whilst I read through other answers, I was confused as to why it did not work for me. Apparently the index of a column will not work when using case when.

In the end, I put up the whole query with unions into a subquery with the solution being:

SELECT * FROM(
  SELECT id, name, sortbycolumn FROM table
  WHERE id = :in_id
  UNION
  SELECT id, name, null sortbycolumn FROM table
  WHERE id = :in_id
)
ORDER BY
    case when sortbycolumn = 1 THEN id,
    case when sortbycolumn = 2 then name
    else id end

How to specify dynamic order by clause in Oracle

Order by two outer CASE expressions, one ASC one DESC. In the first one check if you want to sort ASC and if not let the expression return a constant or NULL, i.e. it doesn't change the order. For the case you want to sort ASC add an inner CASE expression, that returns the column to sort by. Analogously handle the DESC case.

...
ORDER BY CASE
           WHEN in_order_dir = 'ASC' THEN
             CASE
               WHEN in_order_by = 1 THEN
                 city_code
               WHEN in_order_by = 2 THEN
                 city_name
               ...
             END
         END ASC,
         CASE
           WHEN in_order_dir = 'DESC' THEN
             CASE
               WHEN in_order_by = 1 THEN
                 city_code
               WHEN in_order_by = 2 THEN
                 city_name
               ...
             END
         END DESC;

Maybe you have to adapt it because of type incompatibilities between the columns, I can't tell that from what you posted. But it should convey the general concept.

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Edit:

On the type problem:

One possibility is to convert the columns to compatible data types in a way the order is kept. For instance, if you have a char_column (of the type char), a date_column and an integer_column (of date and integer) you could do

to_char(date_column, 'YYYYMMDDHH24MISS')

to convert the date and

lpad(11, 38, '0')

to convert the integer to char.

The cleaner thing to do, but the one with more work to do (for the programmer, in terms of performance there should be no significant difference whatsoever) is to split the expressions once more. I.e. have an outer CASE for each type your columns are for each direction.

Like

ORDER BY CASE
           WHEN in_order_dir = 'ASC' THEN
             CASE
               WHEN in_order_by = 1 THEN
                 char_column1
               WHEN in_order_by = 2 THEN
                 char_column2
               ...
             END
         END ASC,
         CASE
           WHEN in_order_dir = 'ASC' THEN
             CASE
               WHEN in_order_by = 3 THEN
                 date_column1
               WHEN in_order_by = 4 THEN
                 date_column2
               ...
             END
         END ASC,

and so on for all types and analogously for DESC. Remember, if the column isn't meant to be sorted after such CASE will yield NULL and sorting by that won't influence the order.

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