Question

I would like to construct a SELECT statement that can name the results based on the condition. To better explain my attempt, I constructed the following invalid / non-working statement. How could the following SELECT statement be altered to one that actually works for my cause. Thx!

SELECT  
  CASE
     WHEN dayStart LIKE '2012-06-11%' THEN UNIX_TIMESTAMP(dayStart) as today
     WHEN dayStart LIKE '2012-06-10%' THEN UNIX_TIMESTAMP(dayStart) as yest
     WHEN dayStart LIKE '2012-06-12%' THEN UNIX_TIMESTAMP(dayStart) as tomor
  END
FROM dayBook
WHERE userID = 1

Answer 1

Why not just return two columns, one that tells you the date, the other that tells you if it’s today, yesterday, or tomorrow?

SELECT  
  UNIX_TIMESTAMP(dayStart) as yourDate
, CASE
     WHEN dayStart LIKE '2012-06-11%' THEN 'today'
     WHEN dayStart LIKE '2012-06-10%' THEN 'yest'
     WHEN dayStart LIKE '2012-06-12%' THEN 'tomor'
  END as dayType
FROM dayBook
WHERE userID = 1