Unquote identifiers

Call this method to convert a SQL object created by dbQuoteIdentifier() back to a list of Id objects.

Methods in other packages

This documentation page describes the generics. Refer to the documentation pages linked below for the documentation for the methods that are implemented in various backend packages.

• adbi::dbUnquoteIdentifier("AdbiConnection", "ANY")

• odbc::dbUnquoteIdentifier("Microsoft SQL Server", "SQL")

• pool::dbUnquoteIdentifier("Pool", "ANY")

• RMariaDB::dbUnquoteIdentifier("MariaDBConnection", "SQL")

• RPostgres::dbUnquoteIdentifier("PqConnection", "SQL")

• RSQLite::dbUnquoteIdentifier("SQLiteConnection", "SQL")

Usage

dbUnquoteIdentifier(conn, x, ...)

Arguments

conn

A DBIConnection object, as returned by dbConnect().

x

An SQL or Id object.

...

Other arguments passed on to methods.

Value

dbUnquoteIdentifier() returns a list of objects of the same length as the input. For an empty vector, this function returns a length-0 object. The names of the input argument are preserved in the output. If x is a value returned by dbUnquoteIdentifier(), calling dbUnquoteIdentifier(..., dbQuoteIdentifier(..., x)) returns list(x). If x is an object of class DBI::Id, calling dbUnquoteIdentifier(..., x) returns list(x). (For backends it may be most convenient to return DBI::Id objects to achieve this behavior, but this is not required.)

Plain character vectors can also be passed to dbUnquoteIdentifier().

Failure modes

An error is raised if a character vectors with a missing value is passed as the x argument.

Specification

For any character vector of length one, quoting (with DBI::dbQuoteIdentifier()) then unquoting then quoting the first element is identical to just quoting. This is also true for strings that contain special characters such as a space, a dot, a comma, or quotes used to mark strings or identifiers, if the database supports this.

Unquoting simple strings (consisting of only letters) wrapped with DBI::SQL() and then quoting via DBI::dbQuoteIdentifier() gives the same result as just quoting the string. Similarly, unquoting expressions of the form SQL("schema.table") and then quoting gives the same result as quoting the identifier constructed by Id("schema", "table").

See also

Other DBIConnection generics: DBIConnection-class, dbAppendTable(), dbAppendTableArrow(), dbCreateTable(), dbCreateTableArrow(), dbDataType(), dbDisconnect(), dbExecute(), dbExistsTable(), dbGetException(), dbGetInfo(), dbGetQuery(), dbGetQueryArrow(), dbIsReadOnly(), dbIsValid(), dbListFields(), dbListObjects(), dbListResults(), dbListTables(), dbQuoteIdentifier(), dbReadTable(), dbReadTableArrow(), dbRemoveTable(), dbSendQuery(), dbSendQueryArrow(), dbSendStatement(), dbWriteTable(), dbWriteTableArrow()

Examples

# Unquoting allows to understand the structure of a
# possibly complex quoted identifier
dbUnquoteIdentifier(
  ANSI(),
  SQL(c('"Catalog"."Schema"."Table"', '"Schema"."Table"', '"UnqualifiedTable"'))
)
#> [[1]]
#> <Id> "Catalog"."Schema"."Table"
#> 
#> [[2]]
#> <Id> "Schema"."Table"
#> 
#> [[3]]
#> <Id> "UnqualifiedTable"
#> 

# The returned object is always a list,
# also for Id objects
dbUnquoteIdentifier(ANSI(), Id("Catalog", "Schema", "Table"))
#> [[1]]
#> <Id> "Catalog"."Schema"."Table"
#> 

# Quoting and unquoting are inverses
dbQuoteIdentifier(
  ANSI(),
  dbUnquoteIdentifier(ANSI(), SQL("UnqualifiedTable"))[[1]]
)
#> <SQL> "UnqualifiedTable"

dbQuoteIdentifier(
  ANSI(),
  dbUnquoteIdentifier(ANSI(), Id("Schema", "Table"))[[1]]
)
#> <SQL> "Schema"."Table"