How to find the longest string value in a column SQL?

Syntax

There are several ways to get the longest string value of a specified column in SQL.

You can sort the table using the LENGTH of that column then select the first row with longest string value:

SELECT *
FROM table_name
ORDER BY LENGTH(col_name) DESC
LIMIT 1;

Or use the MAX() function:

SELECT *
FROM table_name
WHERE LENGTH(col_name) = (
	SELECT MAX(LENGTH(col_name))
	FROM table_name)
LIMIT 1;

If there are possibly more than one rows with same longest string values and you want to return them all:

SELECT *
FROM table_name
WHERE LENGTH(col_name) = (
	SELECT MAX(LENGTH(col_name))
	FROM table_name);

Example:

We have this table departments in MySQL:

dept_no	dept_name
d001	Marketing
d002	Finance
d003	Human Resources
d004	Production
d005	Development
d006	Quality Management
d007	Sales
d008	Research
d009	Customer Service

Now get the row with the longest department name:

SELECT *
FROM departments
WHERE LENGTH(dept_name) = (
	SELECT MAX(LENGTH(dept_name))
	FROM departments);

The result is:

dept_no	dept_name
d006	Quality Management

Need a good GUI tool for databases? TablePlus provides a native client that allows you to access and manage Oracle, MySQL, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, and many other databases simultaneously using an intuitive and powerful graphical interface.