Display and concatenate records ignoring NULL values in MySQL

Use CONCAT() to concatenate records whereas IFNULL() to check for NULL values.

Let us first create a table −

mysql> create table DemoTable802 (
   FirstName varchar(100),
   LastName varchar(100)
);
Query OK, 0 rows affected (1.01 sec)

Insert some records in the table using insert command −

mysql> insert into DemoTable802 values('Adam','Smith');
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.23 sec)
mysql> insert into DemoTable802 values('Carol',NULL);
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.15 sec)
mysql> insert into DemoTable802 values(NULL,'Taylor');
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.09 sec)
mysql> insert into DemoTable802 values(NULL,NULL);
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.21 sec)

Display all records from the table using select statement −

mysql> select *from DemoTable802;

This will produce the following output -

+-----------+----------+
| FirstName | LastName |
+-----------+----------+
| Adam      | Smith    |
| Carol     | NULL     |
| NULL      | Taylor   |
| NULL      | NULL     |
+-----------+----------+
4 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Following is the query to concatenate records ignoring the NULL values −

mysql> select concat(IFNULL(FirstName,''),' ',IFNULL(LastName,'')) AS FULL_NAME from DemoTable802;

This will produce the following output -

+------------+
| FULL_NAME  |
+------------+
| Adam Smith |
| Carol      |
| Taylor     |
|            |
+------------+
4 rows in set (0.00 sec)