MySQL Orderby a number, Nulls last

Question

Currently I am doing a very basic OrderBy in my statement.

SELECT * FROM tablename WHERE visible=1 ORDER BY position ASC, id DESC

The probl

Answer 1

NULL LAST

SELECT * FROM table_name ORDER BY id IS NULL, id ASC

Answer 2

SELECT * FROM tablename WHERE visible=1 ORDER BY CASE WHEN `position` = 0 THEN 'a' END , position ASC

Answer 3

You can coalesce your NULLs in the ORDER BY statement:

select * from tablename
where <conditions>
order by
    coalesce(position, 0) ASC, 
    id DESC

If you want the NULLs to sort on the bottom, try coalesce(position, 100000). (Make the second number bigger than all of the other position's in the db.)

Answer 4

Something like

SELECT * FROM tablename where visible=1 ORDER BY COALESCE(position, 999999999) ASC, id DESC

Replace 999999999 with what ever the max value for the field is

Answer 5

I found this to be a good solution for the most part:

SELECT * FROM table ORDER BY ISNULL(field), field ASC;

Answer 6

MySQL has an undocumented syntax to sort nulls last. Place a minus sign (-) before the column name and switch the ASC to DESC:

SELECT * FROM tablename WHERE visible=1 ORDER BY -position DESC, id DESC

It is essentially the inverse of position DESC placing the NULL values last but otherwise the same as position ASC.

A good reference is here http://troels.arvin.dk/db/rdbms#select-order_by