MYSQL: How to make NULL or empty data default to 0 during insert

Question

So this seems like it would be pretty straight forward and I swear I\'ve done this before, but for some reason it\'s just not working for me.

I am using MAMP

Answer 1

You can definitely use a trigger for that

Assuming that you make the field nullable

CREATE TABLE `listings` (
  `ListingID` int(11) NOT NULL,
  `BathsFull` int(6),              <-----
  PRIMARY KEY (`ListingID`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

Trigger

DELIMITER $$
CREATE TRIGGER tg_lst_insert BEFORE INSERT ON listings
FOR EACH ROW
BEGIN
    SET NEW.BathsFull = IFNULL(NEW.BathsFull, 0);
END $$
DELIMITER ; 

Inserting some rows

INSERT INTO `listings` VALUES(1, '');
INSERT INTO `listings` VALUES(3, 'a');
INSERT INTO `listings` VALUES(4, NULL);
INSERT INTO `listings` (ListingID) VALUES(2);
INSERT INTO `listings` VALUES(5, 3);

Result

+-----------+-----------+
| ListingID | BathsFull |
+-----------+-----------+
|         1 |         0 |
|         2 |         0 |
|         3 |         0 |
|         4 |         0 |
|         5 |         3 |
+-----------+-----------+