25% off Hosting at HostGator.com:
Use Code techbits25

How can I add a conditional statement in the field list of my sql statement?

Last updated: 06/30/2009

Suppose you are selecting records from a database, and you want to add some logic to the resulting output. For example, assume I am outputting a person's name, and I have three fields:

first_name last_name middle_initial

I want to display the output like so:

firstname middle_initial. last_name

However, if there's no middle_initial, I'm going to end up with a "." between the first and last names, and it'll look stupid. I can fix this by adding a conditional to the sql call:

SELECT first_name, CONCAT(middle_initial, IF(middle_initial != '','.','')) as middle, last_name from names

Now, the field "middle" can be used in your output and will either by empty, or contain the middle initial with a "." after it.

blog comments powered by Disqus

Have your own Tech-bit to contribute? Submit it here

Other questions in this category:

	What causes an error 150 when loading data into a mysql database?
	How can I display long records in mysql without wrapping?
	How can I import data in mysql
	How can I get mysql table definitions in my php script?
	How can I execute commands on mysql using a php script?
	What causes mysql to give an error 145?
	How can I dump table definitions (with no data) using mysqldump?
	How can I manipulate a table with a reserved word as a column name?
	How can I find out table information in mysql?
	How can I rename a field in a mysql table?
	How can a change a user password in mysql?
	How can I reset the auto_increment id field in my table?
	How can I see the syntax used to create a table in mysql?
	How can I delete or remove a field from a mysql table?
	What does an error 'Got error 122 from storage engine' mean?
	How can I run sql commands from a file or import tables from the mysqldump?
	How can I create a CSV file from a query?
	How can I dump selected records using mysqldump?
	How can I sum a field in mySQL only if it contains a value?
	How can I find out all the unique values stored in a specific field?
	How can I give a custom name to a field in my SQL query?
	How can I copy a table from one database to another?
	How can I do a search and replace in a mysql table?
	How can I load in a sql file using the mysql command line?
	How can I setup a field to record the last update of a record in mysql?
	I need a php function to put all rows from a mysql query into an array
	How can I find old or expired records in a database?
	What's an easy backup script for my mysql databases?
	How can I load a mysql query into a hash in php?
	How to match a mysql datetime field for a specific day
	How can I total up the number of entries in a database table by month?
	SQL basics
	Why use Mysql?
	How do I remove / delete a field from a table?
	How can I get rid of strange characters in my database output?
	Tuning your mysql database.
	How can a rearrange or reorder the column order in my table?
	How can I fix this error: Can't create/write to file '/tmp/#sql_1111.MYD' (Errcode: 17)?
	How do I reset my mysql quota on a 1&1 shared account?
	How can I figure out the next auto_increment value for my table?
	How can I see how big each mysql table is?
	How can I remove a primary key from my database table?
	How can I restore part of a table from a mysqldump backup file?
	How to use Mysql subqueries instead of a join
	How can I re-order the fields in my mysql database?
	How can I recreate all the users in my database to a new database?
	How can I log slow queries in mysql?

Content provided by Roberts WebForge, Inc.

Technology TidBits

How can I add a conditional statement in the field list of my sql statement?