Question

I have some code (inherited) which selects a row from table ‘members’ and also some details from a row from table ‘image’:

SELECT members.main,members.id,image.main,image.thumb,bio,
altered,members.title,author 
FROM members,image WHERE members.main = image.id

This works fine in all cases, except those where the field ‘members.main’ is empty. Is there a way to keep the same functionality of this code (i.e. match up the member with the image) while catering for cases where ‘members.main’ is empty?

I tried

WHERE members.main = image.id OR members.main = ''

but this returned garbled results.

Thanks,

G

Answer 1

Use a left outer join:

SELECT
    members.main,
    members.id,
    image.main,
    image.thumb,
    bio,
    altered,
    members.title,
    author
FROM members
LEFT JOIN image
ON members.main = image.id

A LEFT JOIN returns all rows from the left table (members) whether or not they match a row in the right table (image).