How can I order by NULL in DQL?

Question

I\'m building an app using Symfony2 framework and using Doctrine ORM. I have a table with airlines for which some IATA codes are missing. I\'m outputting a list, ordered by

Answer 1

Here it is an example for a custom walker to get exactly what you want. I have taken it from Doctrine in its github issues:

https://github.com/doctrine/doctrine2/pull/100

But the code as it is there didn't work for me in MySQL. I have modified it to work in MySQL, but I haven't test at all for other engines.

Put following walker class for example in YourNS\Doctrine\Waler\ directory;

getQuery()->getHint('SortableNullsWalker.fields'))
      {
         if (is_array($nullFields))
         {
            $platform = $this->getConnection()->getDatabasePlatform()->getName();
            switch ($platform)
            {
            case 'mysql':
               // for mysql the nulls last is represented with - before the field name
               foreach ($nullFields as $field => $sorting)
               {
                  /**
                   * NULLs are considered lower than any non-NULL value,
                   * except if a – (minus) character is added before
                   * the column name and ASC is changed to DESC, or DESC to ASC;
                   * this minus-before-column-name feature seems undocumented.
                   */
                  if ('NULLS LAST' === $sorting)
                  {
                     $sql = preg_replace_callback('/ORDER BY (.+)'.'('.$field.') (ASC|DESC)/i', function($matches) {
                        if ($matches[3] === 'ASC') {
                           $order = 'DESC';
                        } elseif ($matches[3] === 'DESC') {
                           $order = 'ASC';
                        }
                        return ('ORDER BY -'.$matches[1].$matches[2].' '.$order);
                     }, $sql);
                  }
               }
                  break;
            case 'oracle':
            case 'postgresql':
               foreach ($nullFields as $field => $sorting)
               {
                  $sql = preg_replace('/(\.' . $field . ') (ASC|DESC)?\s*/i', "$1 $2 " . $sorting, $sql);
               }
               break;
            default:
               // I don't know for other supported platforms.
               break;
               }
            }
         }

         return $sql;
   }
}

Then:

use YourNS\Doctrine\Walker\SortableNullsWalker;
use Doctrine\ORM\Query;

[...]

$qb = $em->getRepository('YourNS:YourEntity')->createQueryBuilder('e');
$qb
   ->orderBy('e.orderField')
   ;

$entities = $qb->getQuery()
  ->setHint(Query::HINT_CUSTOM_OUTPUT_WALKER,  '\YourNS\Doctrine\Walker\SortableNullsWalker')
  ->setHint('SortableNullsWalker.fields', array(
     'sortOrder' => SortableNullsWalker::NULLS_LAST
  ))
  ->getResult();