Question

Is there a better way to do this?

SELECT subs. * ,
       CASE subs.member_type
         WHEN 'member' THEN 
         ( SELECT CONCAT_WS( ' ', members.first_name, members.last_name )
             FROM members
            WHERE members.id = subs.member_id)
         ELSE 
         ( SELECT members_anon.username
             FROM members_anon
            WHERE members_anon.id = subs.member_id)
       END AS fullname,
       CASE subs.member_type
         WHEN 'member' THEN 
         ( SELECT members.email
             FROM members
            WHERE members.id = subs.member_id)
         ELSE 
         ( SELECT members_anon.email
             FROM members_anon
            WHERE members_anon.id = subs.member_id)
       END AS email
  FROM subs
 WHERE subs.item_id =19
   AND subs.item_type = 'blog'
 LIMIT 0 , 30

Ideally I would like to have only one CASE section that returned name and email from the relevant table.

Answer 1

I would use left outer joins on both tables:

SELECT subs. * ,
       CASE subs.member_type
         WHEN 'member' THEN CONCAT_WS( ' ', m.first_name, m.last_name )
         ELSE ma.username
       END AS fullname,
       CASE subs.member_type
         WHEN 'member' THEN m.email
         ELSE ma.email
       END AS email
  FROM subs
  LEFT OUTER JOIN members m on (m.id = subs.member_id)
  LEFT OUTER JOIN members_anon ma on (ma.id = subs.member_id)
 WHERE subs.item_id =19
   AND subs.item_type = 'blog'
 LIMIT 0 , 30

Regarding the only one case wish, if you need two different columns on your resultset, you will need two case sentences.