MySQL CASE

The MySQL CASE Statement

The CASE statement is used to define different results based on specified conditions in an SQL statement.

The CASE statement goes through the conditions and stops at the first match (like an if-then-else statement). So, once a condition is true, it will stop processing and return the result. If no conditions are true, it returns the value in the ELSE clause. If there is no ELSE clause and no conditions are true, it returns NULL.

CASE Syntax

CASE
    WHEN condition1 THEN result1

WHEN condition2 THEN result2
    WHEN
conditionN THEN resultN
    ELSE result
END;

MySQL CASE Example

Here we use the CASE estatement to categorize data (Price) and we create a new column (PriceCategory) that shows in which price category each product is:

Example

SELECT ProductName, Price,
CASE
  WHEN Price < 20 THEN 'Low Cost'
  WHEN Price BETWEEN 20 AND 50 THEN 'Medium Cost'
  ELSE 'High Cost'
END AS PriceCategory
FROM Products;