MySQL Orderby a number, Nulls last

Currently I am doing a very basic OrderBy in my statement.

SELECT * FROM tablename WHERE visible=1 ORDER BY position ASC, id DESC

The problem with this is that NULL entries for ‘position’ are treated as 0. Therefore all entries with position as NULL appear before those with 1,2,3,4. eg:

NULL, NULL, NULL, 1, 2, 3, 4

Is there a way to achieve the following ordering:

1, 2, 3, 4, NULL, NULL, NULL.

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Answers:

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Method 1

MySQL has an undocumented syntax to sort nulls last. Place a minus sign (-) before the column name and switch the ASC to DESC:

SELECT * FROM tablename WHERE visible=1 ORDER BY -position DESC, id DESC

It is essentially the inverse of position DESC placing the NULL values last but otherwise the same as position ASC.

A good reference is here http://troels.arvin.dk/db/rdbms#select-order_by

Method 2

I found this to be a good solution for the most part:

SELECT * FROM table ORDER BY ISNULL(field), field ASC;

Method 3

NULL LAST

SELECT * FROM table_name ORDER BY id IS NULL, id ASC

Method 4

Something like

SELECT * FROM tablename where visible=1 ORDER BY COALESCE(position, 999999999) ASC, id DESC

Replace 999999999 with what ever the max value for the field is

Method 5

You can swap out instances of NULL with a different value to sort them first (like 0 or -1) or last (a large number or a letter)…

SELECT field1, IF(field2 IS NULL, 9999, field2) as ordered_field2
  FROM tablename
 WHERE visible = 1
 ORDER BY ordered_field2 ASC, id DESC

Method 6

Try using this query:

SELECT * FROM tablename
WHERE visible=1 
ORDER BY 
CASE WHEN position IS NULL THEN 1 ELSE 0 END ASC,id DESC

Method 7

You can coalesce your NULLs in the ORDER BY statement:

select * from tablename
where <conditions>
order by
    coalesce(position, 0) ASC, 
    id DESC

If you want the NULLs to sort on the bottom, try coalesce(position, 100000). (Make the second number bigger than all of the other position‘s in the db.)

Method 8

For a DATE column you can use:

NULLS last:

ORDER BY IFNULL(`myDate`, '9999-12-31') ASC

Blanks last:

ORDER BY IF(`myDate` = '', '9999-12-31', `myDate`) ASC

Method 9

SELECT * FROM tablename WHERE visible=1 ORDER BY CASE WHEN `position` = 0 THEN 'a' END , position ASC

Method 10

To achieve following result :

1, 2, 3, 4, NULL, NULL, NULL.

USE syntax, place -(minus sign) before field name and use inverse order_type(Like: If you want order by ASC order then use DESC or if you want DESC order then use ASC)

SELECT * FROM tablename WHERE visible=1 ORDER BY -position DESC

Method 11

This works well for me as well.

ORDER BY ISNULL(field), field = 0 ASC;

Returns
1
2
3
0
0
null
null

Method 12

This is working fine:

SELECT * FROM tablename ORDER BY position = 0, position ASC;

position
1 
2
3
0
0

Method 13

That’s simple. You just need to order twice:

first step, order NULLs
second step, order your field.

SELECT * FROM table_name 
ORDER BY ISNULL(field_name), field_name;

It works with any types, including JSON.

Method 14

Why don’t you order by NULLS LAST?

SELECT * 
FROM tablename
WHERE visible = 1 
ORDER BY position ASC NULLS LAST, id DESC

All methods was sourced from stackoverflow.com or stackexchange.com, is licensed under cc by-sa 2.5, cc by-sa 3.0 and cc by-sa 4.0

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