Question

I have two fields that I’m comparing with MySQL’s function COALESCE(). For example, COALESCE(Field1, Field2). The problem is, Field1 is sometimes blank but not null; since it’s not null COALESCE() selects Field1, even though its blank. In that case, I need it to select Field2.

I know I can write a if-then-else (CASE) statement in the query to check for this, but is there a nice simple function like COALESCE() for blank-but-not-null fields?

Answer 1

SELECT IFNULL(NULLIF(Field1,''),Field2)

NULLIF returns a NULL if Field1 is blank, while IFNULL returns Field1 if it’s not blank or NULL and Field2 otherwise.