Question

I’m trying to return some values optionally (if they exist) and if not return the rest of the set.

SELECT people.first_name, countries1.name AS "Country1" 
FROM addressbook_people AS people
JOIN root_countries AS countries1 ON people.country1 = countries1.id

On some cases there will be no value supplied for people.country1,
however if one it not supplied no results.

How would I restructure this query to still return people.first_name
when there is no value in people.country1?

Answer 1

Just do

SELECT people.first_name, countries1.name AS "Country1" 
FROM addressbook_people AS people
LEFT JOIN root_countries AS countries1 ON people.country1 = countries1.id

which will result to returning NULL on the respective fields of the root_countries table.