IF-THEN-ELSE statements in postgresql

Question

I\'m looking to write a postgresql query to do the following :

if(field1 > 0,  field2 / field1 , 0)

I\'ve tried this query, but it\'s no

Answer 1

In general, an alternative to case when ... is coalesce(nullif(x,bad_value),y) (that cannot be used in OP's case). For example,

select coalesce(nullif(y,''),x), coalesce(nullif(x,''),y), *
from (     (select 'abc' as x, '' as y)
 union all (select 'def' as x, 'ghi' as y)
 union all (select '' as x, 'jkl' as y)
 union all (select null as x, 'mno' as y)
 union all (select 'pqr' as x, null as y)
) q

gives:

 coalesce | coalesce |  x  |  y  
----------+----------+-----+-----
 abc      | abc      | abc | 
 ghi      | def      | def | ghi
 jkl      | jkl      |     | jkl
 mno      | mno      |     | mno
 pqr      | pqr      | pqr | 
(5 rows)