Question

I have a php form that searches a SQL database. There are say eight form fields each of which are optional. If everything is left blank, the query will return the entire database. If one field is filled out it will filter by one field, two it will filter by two, etc. I haven’t had any issues until I wanted the ability to search for null entries. So for example I want to search where the customers has a last name but DOES NOT have a primary phone number. I’ve been working for a couple hours and can’t think of a simple way to implement something like this. I envision it as you type a keyword into the search field to search where the item is null on top of everything else. So if I put “Smith” into last name and “NULL” into phone number it would work with my above example. Below is my current code.

$query = "SELECT * 
          FROM customer_search_view 
          WHERE COALESCE(customer_search_view.first_name,'') LIKE $firstName AND 
            COALESCE(customer_search_view.last_name,'') LIKE $lastName AND 
            COALESCE(customer_search_view.customer_id,'') LIKE $customerId AND 
            COALESCE(customer_search_view.primary_phone,'') LIKE $primaryPhone AND 
            COALESCE(customer_search_view.email,'') LIKE $email AND 
            COALESCE(customer_search_view.store,'') LIKE $store AND 
            COALESCE(customer_search_view.sales_associate,'') LIKE $salesAssociate AND 
            COALESCE(customer_search_view.bdr_associate,'') LIKE $bdrAssociate AND 
            COALESCE(customer_search_view.status,'') LIKE $status AND 
            COALESCE(customer_search_view.lead_category,'') LIKE $leadCategory 
          ORDER BY created_on DESC LIMIT 0,100";

If there is anyway to search where something is LIKE NULL it would be a quick fix as well.

Answer 1

the only way to find NULL is to use COALESCE(customer_search_view.primary_phone,'') IS NULL so you would need to extend your variables to be like

COALESCE(customer_search_view.primary_phone,'') $primaryPhoneOperator $primaryPhone

If you can’t change your front end you could loop through values before your query such as

if(empty($primaryPhone)) { $primaryPhoneOperator = "IS NULL";  } else { $primaryPhoneOperator = "LIKE"; }