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Databases Reporting with SQL Working with Text Getting the Length of a String

Posted by Avid Coder
Avid Coder
2,053 Points

Using Length Function

In the library database there's a books table with the columns id, title, author, genre and first_published.

Find the book with the longest title. Show the title and then the length. Alias the result of the length calculation to be longest_length. Only retrieve the longest book.

I'm sure im missing something simple. This is what i came up with.

SELECT title, LENGTH(title) AS "longest_length FROM books ORDER BY length DESC LIMIT 1;

1 Answer

Lukas Dahlberg
Lukas Dahlberg
53,736 Points
Lukas Dahlberg
Lukas Dahlberg
53,736 Points

2 things here.

1) You have "longest_length. Looks like a typo where you can lose the ".

2) You did not designate your ORDER BY correctly. You have to tell SQL what you want the LENGTH of. (There are actually 2 ways to do this. Declare LENGTH(column) OR reuse your alias)