COALESCE() for blank (but not null) fields

Question

I have two fields that I\'m comparing with MySQL\'s function COALESCE(). For example, COALESCE(Field1, Field2). The problem is, Field1 is sometimes blank but no

Answer 1

SELECT IFNULL(NULLIF(Field1,''),Field2)

NULLIF returns a NULL if Field1 is blank, while IFNULL returns Field1 if it's not blank or NULL and Field2 otherwise.

Answer 2

I know I'm late to the party here, but there is a way to do this while still using COALESCE(). This would then work if your value was NULL or ''.

Select COALESCE(NULLIF(Field1,''), Field2)

Answer 3

You can use a CASE expression:

CASE WHEN Field1 <> '' THEN Field1 ELSE Field2 END