Question

I have 3 tables; CASES, USERS and USER_META. For this issue you need to know that the USER_META table has 3 columns; user_id, meta_key and meta_value

Each user is associated with many CASES and each USER is associated with many USER_META

My current query is like this

SELECT CASES.*, USERS.*, USER_META.*
FROM CASES
JOIN USERS ON USERS."user_id" = CASES."user_id"
JOIN USER_META ON USER_META_"user_id" = USERS."user_id"

The problem with this approach is that each USER has A LOT of USER_META so my result set has too many rows. How can I rewrite this query so that I can select only the USER_META where the USER_META.”meta_key” is equal to a certain value yet still get the result if they do not have this USER_META.”meta_key” set yet

For example:

SELECT CASES.*, USERS.*, USER_META.*
FROM CASES
JOIN USERS ON USERS."user_id" = CASES."user_id"
JOIN USER_META ON USER_META_"user_id" = USERS."user_id"
WHERE USER_META."meta_key" = 'my_key'

This would work great but not all users have a value of “my_key” in the “meta_key” column and we still need to view their CASE. For users that do not have the “meta_key” the result should just return the CASE and USER columns.

How can I rewrite this query so it gets the result for both users with this meta_key and without?

Thanks, I hope this makes sense.

Answer 1

I would use a LEFT JOIN

SELECT CASES.*, USERS.*, USER_META.*
FROM CASES
JOIN USERS ON USERS."user_id" = CASES."user_id"
LEFT JOIN USER_META ON USER_META."user_id" = USERS."user_id" AND USER_META."meta_key" = ?