Displaying Multiple SQL Fields as a Single Field

Question

I have the following tables:

CREATE TABLE title (
 booktitle VARCHAR( 60 ),
 title_id CHAR( 6 ),
 au_id CHAR( 11 ),
 PRIMARY KEY (title_id)
    )

 create table authors (
 au_id  char(11),
 au_lname varchar(20),
 au_fname varchar(20),
 phone  varchar(10),
 address  varchar(30),
 city  varchar(20),
 state  char(2),
 zip  char(5));

I need to somehow show the booktitle, au_lname and au_fname in one field. I want to order it by CITY, but that should be simple enough. So far I have made a view of this data, but I am not sure how to make it into a single field? I tried using the "AS" command, but I keep getting errors.

Here is my working view:

CREATE VIEW authorname AS
 SELECT
  title.booktitle, authors.au_fname, authors.au_lname
 FROM
  title
  INNER JOIN authors ON title.au_id = authors.au_id
 ORDER BY authors.city

Answer 1

You can use CONCAT() to concatenate string values:

CREATE VIEW authorname AS
  SELECT
    CONCAT(title.booktitle,  authors.au_fname,  authors.au_lname) as name
  FROM title
  INNER JOIN authors ON title.au_id = authors.au_id
  ORDER BY authors.city

or if you want to separate the values by a certain character, use CONCAT_WS():

CONCAT_WS(' ', title.booktitle,  authors.au_fname, authors.au_lname) as name