How to use for each item inside copy activity source SQL query in ADF

Question

I’m working in Azure Data Factory. I have a Lookup activity that gets a list of authors from a SQL table. Then, in a ForEach loop, I want to run a Copy activity for each author to fetch only that author’s records from the database.

I tried writing the SQL query in Copy activity like: SELECT * FROM table WHERE author = item().author but I got an error saying “item is not a recognized function”, because SQL doesn’t understand what item() is.

example---author='[email protected]'

My question is: ➤ How can I filter the Copy activity’s query for each author from the ForEach loop?

Please clarify your specific problem or provide additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it's hard to tell exactly what you're asking. — Community
– Community Bot, Commented Jul 10 at 8:36

Nandan · Accepted Answer · 2025-07-10 11:02:41Z

0

Use Concat option :

@concat('SELECT * FROM table WHERE author ="', item().author,'"')

Assuming you dont need quotes within the values

edited Jul 10 at 11:02

answered Jul 10 at 9:56

Nandan

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2 Comments

Neiko Jul 10 at 10:01

author value is a string value which contains email id so it requires quotes in the sql query

Nandan Jul 10 at 11:02

updated the answer

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