Question

I have a table that holds items:

id      name         groups 
1       a1          
2       a2           b1
3       a3
4       c1           
5       c2
6       c3           b1

I’d like to figure out an effective way to sort these items by name if groups does not exist (read: has no entry – null), or if groups exists, sort using the groups.

So if I were to sort the following table, the result would be:

a1
a3
a2
c3
c1
c2

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

If “blank” means either null or '', use this:

select id, name, groups
from mytable
order by if(groups is null or groups = '', name, groups)

If “blank” means just null, then this simpler version will work:

select id, name, groups
from mytable
order by ifnull(groups, name)