Weird query

[tibberous]

I have a table called users, with three fields, firstname, lastname and displayname.

 

If displayname isn't null, I want to select displayname, otherwise I want to select firstname, a space, and then lastname. I'm guessing I'll need to use concat, but I'm not sure how to do the actually decision part.

[tibberous]

Crashes =(

 

if users.displayname not null then select display_name from users else select contact(firstname, ' ', lastname) as display_name end if

[wildteen88]

Try:

SELECT ( IFNULL( displayname, CONCAT_WS( ' ', firstname, lastname )) ) AS display_name FROM users

Seems to do the trick. Not bad for a quick test and first try.

[cunoodle2]

Couldn't you just do the decision making in php?

 

if($display_name <> "")
{
    $query = "Select * FROM users WHERE displayname = ".$display_name.";";
}
else
{
    $query = "Select * FROM users WHERE displayname = ".".$firstname." ".$lastname.";";
}

[wildteen88]

Couldn't you just do the decision making in php?

 

if($display_name <> "")
{
    $query = "Select * FROM users WHERE displayname = ".$display_name.";";
}
else
{
    $query = "Select * FROM users WHERE displayname = ".".$firstname." ".$lastname.";";
}

No because the displayname and the firstname/lastname are stored in separate fields within the users table. What the OP wants to do is return the firstname and lastname as the displayname if the displayname is not set within the users table, or just the displayname if it is set. My query does this.