Services
Technology Web App Development Mobile App Development Windows App Development Database Development UI/UX Development Cloud Development SEO Digital Marketing Guest Posting Content Writing Artificial Intelligence Data Science ERP Development CRM Development CMS Development LMS Development Business Listing Blockchain Technology Startup Promotion AI Tools Integration
Products
Data Converter Cleaner TUC - Unit Converter Import Export Survey Manager Tweet Controller
Developer
Article Blog Forum Interview Beginner News Startup Quiz
Users
Career
Apply Job Internship
Pricing
Login Sign Up Get a Quote

forum

Home Forums How to surface a value for more than one row in MySQL – MindStick
Ask Question

How to surface a value for more than one row in MySQL

Anonymous User 2839 18 May 2013
Hi Expert!

I know that I can surface a row in a query by using it in the ORDER BY like this :

SELECT IF(`category` IS NOT NULL,`category`,"Uncategorized") AS `category` FROM `table` ORDER BY `category`="Uncategorized" DESC which will make the first row always contain "Uncategorized", however I have multiple rows that contain it that I also want surfaced. Here are two sample sets of returned data:

What I'm getting:

Uncategorized
Uncategorized
What I want:

Uncategorized
Uncategorized
Health
Science
Wellness

I have tried a number of other things including a CASE and also using a conditional IF. What am I doing wrong?

Thanks in advance! 
mysql mysql
Anonymous User
Ask by Anonymous User
Updated 18 May 2013

1 Answers

AVADHESH PATEL
AVADHESH PATEL 18 May 2013
Report Abuse
Hi John!

You using ORDER BY clause is comparing with the column name category and not on the alias given on the column.

Try as following

SELECT IF(category IS NOT NULL,category,'Uncategorized') category
FROM   `table` 
ORDER  BY IF(category IS NOT NULL,category,'Uncategorized')='Uncategorized' DESC
you can alternatively use COALESCE or IFNULL to make it shorter

SELECT COALESCE(category, 'Uncategorized') category
FROM   `table` 
ORDER  BY COALESCE(category, 'Uncategorized') = 'Uncategorized' DESC, category

MindStick Training
Markdown for AI

A clean, structured version of this page for AI assistants and LLMs.

Open .md