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Natural sorting of alphanumeric values in sqlite using android

I have a list of names of starts with characters and end with numbers like: -
ka1, ka10, ka 2, ka, sa2, sa1, sa10, p1a10, 1kb, p1a2, p1a11, p1a.
I want to sort it in natural order, that is: -
1kb, ka, ka1, ka 2, ka10, p1a, p1a2, p1a10, p1a11, sa1, sa2, sa10.
The main problem I am seeing here is no delimiter between text and numeric part, there also a chance of without numeric part also.
I am using sqlite in android, I can do sorting using java after fetching points by cacheing cursor data, but I am using(recommended to use) cursor adapter.
Please suggest a query for sorting or is there any way to apply sorting in cursor?

I tried below query for Natural sorting:
SELECT
item_no
FROM
items
ORDER BY
LENGTH(item_no), item_no;
It worked for me in Sqlite db too. Please see this link, for more details.

I can propose using regex replacement adding zeros, creating temporary table of original and corresponding values, then follow this link for sorting it: http://www.saltycrane.com/blog/2007/12/how-to-sort-table-by-columns-in-python/
tip for regex add as many zeros after last letter, but limit the number of total digits for predicted maximum number of digits. If You need help with regex as well, provide exact info of valid and invalid values, so can halp with that too.
PS if want to be sure that zeros goes before last digits search for char from the end

Updated
You can use different ways - Some of are mentioned below:
BIN Way
SELECT
tbl_column,
BIN(tbl_column) AS binray_not_needed_column
FROM db_table
ORDER BY binray_not_needed_column ASC , tbl_column ASC
Cast Way
SELECT
tbl_column,
CAST(tbl_column as SIGNED) AS casted_column
FROM db_table
ORDER BY casted_column ASC , tbl_column ASC
or try the solution:
There are a whole lot of solutions out there if you hit up Google, and
you can, of course, just use the natsort() function in PHP, but it's
simple enough to accomplish natural sorting in MySQL: sort by length
first, then the column value.
Query: SELECT alphanumeric, integer FROM sorting_test ORDER BY LENGTH(alphanumeric), alphanumeric from here

Combine MATCH with OR clause in the WHERE statement

I want to perform a query in which the WHERE clausule has the following condition:
one MATCH condition over a column in a FTS3 table
OR
another not MATCH condition over a column in a non FTS table.
Example:
Say that I have two tables
books_fts, which is a table with a content column for full text search.
books_tags, which is non FTS table with tags.
I want to search all the books that either contain 'Dikjstra' in their content or are tagged with the 'algorithm' word. So I run this query:
SELECT * from books_fts
LEFT OUTER JOIN books_tags ON books_fts.fk_id = books_tags.id
WHERE (books_fts MATCH 'content:%Dijkstra*')
OR (books_tags.tag = 'algorithm')
I think the query is right, and if I run it with either one of the OR clausules, it works.
However, when running it with the two clausules I get the following error:
unable to use function MATCH in the requested context
Seems to me that I cannot combine a MATCH with a non MATCH in the WHERE clause, even if each of them apply to different tables (one FTS and another non FTS).
Is this true? I cannot find information on it.
NOTE: if the causules are separated with AND instead of OR the query is valid.
Thanks.

It seems it's a known issue in SQL:
http://sqlite.1065341.n5.nabble.com/FTS3-bug-with-MATCH-plus-OR-td50714.html

How to query similar records in SQLite database from Android?

Let's say an SQLite database column contains the following value:
U Walther-Schreiber-Platz
Using a query I'd like to find this record, or any similar records, if the user searches for the following strings:
walther schreiber
u walther
walther-schreiber platz
[Any other similar strings]
However I cannot figure out any query which would do that. Especially if the user does not enter the - character.
Example:
select * from myTable where value like '%walther schreiber%'; would not return the result because of the missing -.
Thanks,
Robert

So, as I said in my comment, I think you can have a query along the lines of:
select * from myTable where LOWER(value) like <SearchValue>
I'm assuming you're collecting the <SearchValue> from the user programmatically, so would be able to do the following: <SearchValue> would need to be: The user's search string, appropriately cleansed to avoid SQL injection attacks, converted to lower case, with all of the spaces converted to '%', so that they match zero or more characters...
So you would have (for example):
select * from myTable where LOWER(value) like '%walther%schreiber%'
select * from myTable where LOWER(value) like '%walther-schreiber%platz%'
etc... however, this does assume that the word order is the same, which in your examples it is...

Retrieving a set of rows from the sqlite database

SELECT * FROM <TableName> WHERE <attribute(id)> IN <ArrayList type>
but theres an error
04-24 21:18:41.748:
ERROR/Error(29495):
android.database.sqlite.SQLiteException:
no such table: 1: , while compiling:
SELECT * FROM Main WHERE id IN [1]
basically i want to select those rows with Attribute(id) which are present in an ArrayList...
but the format of the ArrayList is not the same as the one reqd for this type of query(i guess)
and i think this is the reason, its not workin correctly
if i query it with:
SELECT * FROM <TableName> WHERE <attribute(id)> IN <Integer>
it shows me the correct result... but obv it only selects that particular id's row...
note: ArrayList is replaced with Integer... (which is the data-type of my attribute(id))
Thanks in advance :)

There is no such thing as IN <ArrayList type>.
You need to compute the enumerating string yourself by using JAVA code.
SELECT * FROM <TableName> WHERE _id IN ('1','2','3','4','5')
Also please note that on Android the primary key is recommended to be _id with underscore.

When working with apps, I prefer to let the List I'm using to contain the elements it's holding like:
List<ElementType> = ...
By doing this, you can simply ask each element for their id's. Pentium10's solution will do the job, but I prefer doing this as it gives more flexibility.

Android's SimpleCursorAdapter with queries using DISTINCT

Here's an interesting question that I'm shocked hasn't been asked more often on the internet. Android's CursorAdapters are extremely useful once you get a ContentProvider up and running and learn how to use it, but they are limited due to their requirement on having the _id field as part of their query (an error is thrown without it). Here's why:
My specific problem is that I have two spinners: One spinner should contain unique "category" names from the database, and the other should populate with all the database entries from the selected "category" (category being the column name, here). This seems like a pretty simple setup that many programs might use, no? Trying to implement that first spinner is where I've run into problems.
Here's the query that I would like for that first spinner:
SELECT DISTINCT category FROM table;
Making this query throws an error on CursorAdapter because the _id column is required as part of the query. Adding the _id column to the projection naturally returns every row of the table, since you're now asking for distinct id's as well, and every id is distinct (by definition). Obviously I would rather see only one entry per category name.
I've already implemented a work around, which is to simply make the query above and then copy the results into an ArrayAdapter. My reason for this post is to see if there was a more elegant solution to this odd little problem and start a discussion on what I could be doing better. Alternate implementation suggestions, such as using different kinds of controls or adapters, are very welcome.

Here's the query I ended up with:
SELECT _id, category FROM table_name GROUP BY category;
I used the rawQuery() function on an SQLiteDatabase object to carry this out. The "GROUP BY" piece was the key towards getting the right results, so thanks to user Sagar for pointing me in the right direction.
Do consider user Al Sutton's answer to this question as well, as it may be a more elegant solution to this problem.
Thanks everyone!

I'd suggest having a separate table with just _id & category in it which contains one row per unique category. Your data rows can then replace their category field with the _id from the category table.
This has the added advantage you can change the category in the categories table and it will show up in all entries in that category.

SELECT DISTINCT category,_id FROM table GROUP BY category;
I think this should give you what you are looking for. The results from this will be the category, and the first _id for that category. You can ignore the second column (_id).

You can specify an _id field alias in your select statement that is just a constant value, for example:
SELECT DISTINCT 0 _id, category FROM table;

Better yet, I solved this problem by using:
SELECT DISTINCT category AS _id FROM table
Now, you have a column with the name _id which has what you want in it