Question

I have this query

SELECT 
    COUNT(
            CASE 
                WHEN restricted LIKE '%us%' THEN 2 
                ELSE 1 
            END) AS totalcount 
FROM 
    reviews 
WHERE 
    restricted LIKE '%us%'

This counts the total number of values like “us” appearing in a column (restricted). This column is filled by values from a muultiselect checkbox in this “unusual” manner:

*us*ca*uk* etc.

And this works. No problem.

Now, I need to count where this value (us) is NOT appearing.
I tried to do this, a “classic”.

SELECT 
    COUNT(
            CASE 
                WHEN restricted NOT LIKE '%us%' THEN 2 
                ELSE 1 
            END
    ) AS totalcount 
FROM 
    reviews 
WHERE 
    restricted NOT LIKE '%us%'

I have declared the statemenent NOT LIKE but now… the problem… it count also rows where ‘restricted’ column is NOT FILLED (some listings don’t use this column). And the count is wrong.

Can anyone help, please?

Answer 1

empty value or null value on ‘restricted’ column will pass “restricted NOT LIKE ‘%us%’
” statement. try change to:

SELECT 
    COUNT(
            CASE 
                WHEN restricted NOT LIKE '%us%' THEN 2 
                ELSE 1 
            END
    ) AS totalcount 
FROM 
    reviews 
WHERE 
    restricted NOT LIKE '%us%' 
    AND restricted != '' 
    AND restricted IS NOT NULL