I have a column in a table which might contain null or empty values. How do I check if a column is empty or null in the rows present in a table.
(e.g. null or '' or ' ' or ' ' and ...)
I have a column in a table which might contain null or empty values. How do I check if a column is empty or null in the rows present in a table.
(e.g. null or '' or ' ' or ' ' and ...)
This will select all rows where some_col
is NULL
or ''
(empty string)
SELECT * FROM table WHERE some_col IS NULL OR some_col = '';
As defined by the SQL-92 Standard, when comparing two strings of differing widths, the narrower value is right-padded with spaces to make it is same width as the wider value. Therefore, all string values that consist entirely of spaces (including zero spaces) will be deemed to be equal e.g.
'' = ' ' IS TRUE '' = ' ' IS TRUE ' ' = ' ' IS TRUE ' ' = ' ' IS TRUE etc
Therefore, this should work regardless of how many spaces make up the some_col
value:
SELECT * FROM T WHERE some_col IS NULL OR some_col = ' ';
or more succinctly:
SELECT * FROM T WHERE NULLIF(some_col, ' ') IS NULL;
A shorter way to write the condition:
WHERE some_col > ''
Since null > ''
produces unknown
, this has the effect of filtering out both null
and empty strings.
You can test whether a column is null or is not null using WHERE col IS NULL
or WHERE col IS NOT NULL
e.g.
SELECT myCol FROM MyTable WHERE MyCol IS NULL
In your example you have various permutations of white space. You can strip white space using TRIM
and you can use COALESCE
to default a NULL value (COALESCE will return the first non-null value from the values you suppy.
e.g.
SELECT myCol FROM MyTable WHERE TRIM(COALESCE(MyCol, '') = ''
This final query will return rows where MyCol
is null or is any length of whitespace.
If you can avoid it, it's better not to have a function on a column in the WHERE clause as it makes it difficult to use an index. If you simply want to check if a column is null or empty, you may be better off doing this:
SELECT myCol FROM MyTable WHERE MyCol IS NULL OR MyCol = ''
See TRIM COALESCE and IS NULL for more info.
Also Working with null values from the MySQL docs
Another method without WHERE, try this..
Will select both Empty and NULL values
SELECT ISNULL(NULLIF(fieldname,'')) FROM tablename
try
SELECT 0 IS NULL , '' IS NULL , NULL IS NULL -> 0, 0, 1
or
SELECT ISNULL(' ') , ISNULL( NULL ) -> 0 ,1
I hate messy fields in my databases. If the column might be a blank string or null, I'd rather fix this before doing the select each time, like this:
UPDATE MyTable SET MyColumn=NULL WHERE MyColumn=''; SELECT * FROM MyTable WHERE MyColumn IS NULL
This keeps the data tidy, as long as you don't specifically need to differentiate between NULL and empty for some reason.
While checking null or Empty
value for a column in my project, I noticed that there are some support concern in various Databases.
Every Database doesn't support TRIM
method.
Below is the matrix just to understand the supported methods by different databases.
The TRIM function in SQL is used to remove specified prefix or suffix from a string. The most common pattern being removed is white spaces. This function is called differently in different databases:
TRIM(), RTRIM(), LTRIM()
RTRIM(), LTRIM()
RTRIM(), LTRIM()
How to Check Empty/Null :-
Below are two different ways according to different Databases-
The syntax for these trim functions are:
Use of Trim to check-
SELECT FirstName FROM UserDetails WHERE TRIM(LastName) IS NULL
Use of LTRIM & RTRIM to check-
SELECT FirstName FROM UserDetails WHERE LTRIM(RTRIM(LastName)) IS NULL
Above both ways provide same result just use based on your DataBase support. It Just returns the FirstName
from UserDetails
table if it has an empty LastName
Hoping this will help you :)
If you want to have NULL values presented last when doing an ORDER BY, try this:
SELECT * FROM my_table WHERE NULLIF(some_col, '') IS NULL;
This statement is much cleaner and more readable for me:
select * from my_table where ISNULL(NULLIF(some_col, ''));
Check for null
$column is null isnull($column)
Check for empty
$column != ""
However, you should always set NOT NULL for column,
mysql optimization can handle only one IS NULL level
Either
SELECT IF(field1 IS NULL or field1 = '', 'empty', field1) as field1 from tablename
or
SELECT case when field1 IS NULL or field1 = '' then 'empty' else field1 end as field1 from tablename
You can also do
SELECT * FROM table WHERE column_name LIKE ''
The inverse being
SELECT * FROM table WHERE column_name NOT LIKE ''
SELECT column_name FROM table_name WHERE column_name IN (NULL, '')
try this if the datatype are string and row is null
SELECT * FROM table WHERE column_name IS NULL OR column_name = ''
if the the datatype are int or column are 0 then try this
SELECT * FROM table WHERE column_name > = 0