IN clause and placeholders

Solution 1:

A string of the form "?, ?, ..., ?" can be a dynamically created string and safely put into the original SQL query (because it is a restricted form that does not contain external data) and then the placeholders can be used as normal.

Consider a function String makePlaceholders(int len) which returns len question-marks separated with commas, then:

String[] names = { "name1", "name2" }; // do whatever is needed first
String query = "SELECT * FROM table"
    + " WHERE name IN (" + makePlaceholders(names.length) + ")";
Cursor cursor = mDb.rawQuery(query, names);

Just make sure to pass exactly as many values as places. The default maximum limit of host parameters in SQLite is 999 - at least in a normal build, not sure about Android :)

Here is one implementation:

String makePlaceholders(int len) {
    if (len < 1) {
        // It will lead to an invalid query anyway ..
        throw new RuntimeException("No placeholders");
    } else {
        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(len * 2 - 1);
        sb.append("?");
        for (int i = 1; i < len; i++) {
            sb.append(",?");
        }
        return sb.toString();
    }
}

Solution 2:

Short example, based on answer of user166390:

public Cursor selectRowsByCodes(String[] codes) {
    try {
        SQLiteDatabase db = getReadableDatabase();
        SQLiteQueryBuilder qb = new SQLiteQueryBuilder();

        String[] sqlSelect = {COLUMN_NAME_ID, COLUMN_NAME_CODE, COLUMN_NAME_NAME, COLUMN_NAME_PURPOSE, COLUMN_NAME_STATUS};
        String sqlTables = "Enumbers";

        qb.setTables(sqlTables);

        Cursor c = qb.query(db, sqlSelect, COLUMN_NAME_CODE+" IN (" +
                        TextUtils.join(",", Collections.nCopies(codes.length, "?")) +
                        ")", codes,
                null, null, null); 
        c.moveToFirst();
        return c;
    } catch (Exception e) {
        Log.e(this.getClass().getCanonicalName(), e.getMessage() + e.getStackTrace().toString());
    }
    return null;
}