As I am now aware, CASE can be used only in WHERE context. Though, I need to use different table depending on column value. What I've tried looks like this:
SELECT
`ft1`.`task`,
COUNT(`ft1`.`id`) `count`
FROM
`feed_tasks` `ft1`
CASE
`ft1`.`type`
WHEN
1
THEN
(INNER JOIN `pages` `p1` ON `p1`.`id` = `ft1`.`reference_id`)
WHEN
2
THEN
(INNER JOIN `urls` `u1` ON `u1`.`id` = `ft1`.`reference_id`)
WHERE
`ft1`.`account_id` IS NOT NULL AND
`a1`.`user_id` = {$db->quote($user['id'])}
Now that I know this is invalid syntax, what's the closest alternative?
解决方案
It probably needs tweaking to return the correct results but I hope you get the idea:
SELECT ft1.task, COUNT(ft1.id) AS count
FROM feed_tasks ft1
LEFT JOIN pages p1 ON ft1.type=1 AND p1.id = ft1.reference_id
LEFT JOIN urls u1 ON ft1.type=2 AND u1.id = ft1.reference_id
WHERE COALESCE(p1.id, u1.id) IS NOT NULL
AND ft1.account_id IS NOT NULL
AND a1.user_id = :user_id
Edit:
A little note about CASE...END. Your original code does not run because, unlike PHP or JavaScript, the SQL CASE is not a flow control structure that allows to choose which part of the code will run. Instead, it returns an expression. So you can do this:
SELECT CASE
WHEN foo<0 THEN 'Yes'
ELSE 'No'
END AS is_negative
FROM bar
... but not this:
-- Invalid
CASE
WHEN foo<0 THEN SELECT 'Yes' AS is_negative
ELSE SELECT 'No' AS is_negative
END
FROM bar